AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir
<p>Selected Papers of Internet Research (SPIR) is the open access online collection of papers presented at the annual international conferences of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR).</p>Association of Internet Researchersen-USAoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research2162-3317DEMOGRAPHIC, OCCUPATIONAL AND PROFESSIONAL PREDICTORS OF TWEET DELETION AMONG U.S. JOURNALISTS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13624
<p class="paper_abstract">Twitter and other social media platforms have become a key infrastructure for contemporary journalism (Kleis Nielsen & Ganter, 2018). Journalists use Twitter to gather information (Powers & Vera-Zambrano, 2017). They employ it to maintain a relationship with their audiences and sources and through that to cultivate their individual personal and professional brand as well as their employer’s brand (Molyneux et al., 2018). They also communicate with journalistic peers and hence participate in the ongoing production of aN interpretive community (Carlson, 2016).</p> <p class="paper_abstract">While most research has focused on journalists’ publication practices, much less work has examined their decision to delete content they have already published on social media, an action that could have a meaningful impact on Twitter as a repository of public knowledge. In in-depth interviews, American journalists reported deleting tweets frequently. They also claimed such practices were common among their peers (Ringel & Davidson, 2022). In this study, we examine how journalists’ demographic identity, occupational status, and professional standing might be related to their tendency to delete tweets.</p>Sharon RingelRoei Davidson
Copyright (c) 2024 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2024-03-182024-03-1810.5210/spir.v2023i0.13624THEORIZING AND ANALYZING THE CONTINGENT CASINO
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13488
Gambling games are composed of risk and contingency - the gambler stakes their bet on the spin or a reel or a roulette wheel completely dependent on forces outside of their control, uncertain of the outcome. This potent combination is not only being used to fuel the nearly $500 billion USD global gambling industry, but also to organise the current app economy. Digital platforms, their complementors, and their users are brought together by risk and contingency into a dynamic political economy, with the platform accruing the most advantage (Poell et al., 2021). Unpacking these unequal and sometimes precarious relations requires studying a “representative commodity” (Kline et al., 2003). Social casino apps, a niche, but still significant digital game commodity, embody how risk and contingency manifests in the app economy (Nieborg & Poell, 2018; Zittrain, 2008). In particular, when other industries interface with digital platforms, they become subject to their institutional imperatives (Gorwa, 2019). Social casino apps are representative of how platforms have been able to influence and shape even niche genres of digital leisure, but also the constraints and resistance to these techniques. In this paper, as a political economist of communication, I conduct a structural and critical analysis of the social casino industry, using institutional analysis as my methodology. Alexander M Ross
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13488SOCIAL MEDIA GOVERNANCE VIA AN “ANEMIC” POLICY REGIME? HOW BOUNDARY SPANNING, COMPETING ISSUE DEFINITIONS, LACK OF COHESION, AND ADMINISTRATIVE FRAGMENTATION IMPEDE REGULATORY REFORM
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13486
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. Alexander Rochefort
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13486"YOUTUBE DOESN'T CARE ABOUT CREATORS": HOW YOUTUBERS USE THE PLATFORM TO PROMOTE ACCOUNTABILITY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13484
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. CJ ReynoldsBlake Hallinan
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13484HOOK-UP APPS COMPLICATE VISIBILITY FOR RURAL QUEER PEOPLE: RESULTS OF A QUALITATIVE SCOPING STUDY IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13482
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. Richard RawlingsGenavee BrownLynne CoventryLisa Thomas
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13482MAPPING TUMBLR THROUGH FANNISH HOMOPHILIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13489
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. Lauren RouseMel Stanfill
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13489THE IMPACT OF TIKTOK POLICIES ON INFORMATION FLOWS DURING TIMES OF WAR: EVIDENCE OF ‘SPLINTERNET’ AND ‘SHADOW-PROMOTION’ IN RUSSIA
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13487
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. Salvatore RomanoNatalie KerbyMiazia SchülerDavide BeraldoIlir Rama
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13487THE POLITICS OF PLATFORM IMAGINARIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13485
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. Vanessa RichterThomas Poell
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13485EXPLORING AUTHENTICITY ON THE SOCIAL MEDIA APP BEREAL
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13483
BeReal, the latest social media app to gain popularity, explicitly frames itself as a more “authentic” alternative to dominant platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Users can post only once per day, in a random two-minute window controlled by the app. Posts consist of an image that combines photos from a smartphone’s front- and back-facing cameras. While these individual features aren’t novel, the app packages them as an overt response to current cultural frustration with fake-ness. How persuasive is this marketing tactic, especially among a generation that has grown up with social media? To explore this question, we are interviewing young adult BeReal users about how they use the app and to what extent they experience BeReal as a space for authenticity. Our ongoing analysis suggests that while participants find BeReal to offer forms of real-time and spontaneous authenticity, on a deeper level, they question whether social platforms can ever act as vessels for authenticity. These initial findings indicate that young adults may recognize social media claims to authenticity as the marketing tactics they often are. Ananya ReddyPriya Kumar
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13483“HERE TO HAVE FUN AND FIGHT ABLEISM”: #AUTISKTOK USER BIOS AS NEUROQUEER MICRO-ACTIVIST PLATFORM AFFORDANCES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13481
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. Jessica Sage RauchbergMeryl AlperEllen SimpsonJosh GubermanSarah Feinberg
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13481WHY DO ARAB-PALESTINIAN JOURNALISTS DELETE TWEETS?
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13625
<p>In Israel and Palestine, as in many countries, the majority of journalists operate an account on Twitter for different purposes, from news gathering and reporting to attracting new audiences and maintaining a relationship with their readers (Hanusch & Bruns, 2017). Many studies of Twitter’s journalistic role have examined journalists’ tweeting practices and the ways in which Twitter serves as an organizational and individual branding tool (e.g., Molyneux, Holton, & Lewis, 2018). However, only a few studies have examined the patterns of tweet deletion among journalists. Ringel and Davidson (2022) conceptualized the practice of tweet deletion as an instance of “proactive ephemerality, a social media phenomenon that occurs when users intentionally remove their own content from their social media profiles manually or with the aid of mechanical tools” (p. 1218). In this study, we examine the motivations of Arab-Palestinian journalists who operate in Israel for deleting their tweets. Based on semi-structured interviews with Arab-Palestinian journalists working in Israel, we seek to understand why they proactively erase tweets. Further, we wish to consider the implications of such an act for Twitter’s functioning as a public record.</p>Moatasem ZedanSharon RingelRoei Davidson
Copyright (c) 2024 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13625MEMES, MULTIMODALITIES, AND MACHINES: ASSEMBLING MULTIMODAL PATTERNS IN MEME CLASSIFICATION STUDY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13520
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. Guangnan ZhuKunal ChandDaniel AngusTimothy Graham
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13520DATA REFUSAL FROM BELOW: A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING, EVALUATING, AND ENVISIONING REFUSAL STRATEGIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13521
Amidst calls for public accountability over large data-driven systems, feminist and indigenous scholars have developed refusal as a practice that challenges the authority of data collectors. However, because data affects so many aspects of daily life, it can be hard to see seemingly different refusal strategies as part of the same repertoire. Furthermore, conversations about refusal often happen from the standpoint of designers and policymakers rather than the people and communities most affected by data collection. In this paper, we introduce a framework for data refusal from below—writing from the standpoint of people who refuse, rather than the institutions that seek their compliance. We characterize refusal strategies across four constituent facets common to all refusal, whatever tactics are used: autonomy, or how refusal accounts for individual and collective interests; time, or whether refusal reacts to past harm or proactively prevents future harm; power, or the extent to which refusal makes change possible; and cost, or whether or not refusal can reduce or redistribute penalties experienced by refusers. We illustrate each facet by drawing on cases of people and collectives that have refused data systems. Together, the four facets of our framework are designed to help scholars and activists describe, evaluate, and imagine new forms of refusal. Jonathan ZongJ. Nathan Matias
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13521REVEALING COORDINATED IMAGE-SHARING IN SOCIAL MEDIA: A CASE STUDY OF PRO-RUSSIAN INFLUENCE CAMPAIGNS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13519
Coordinated online disinformation campaigns are by nature difficult to detect. In response, communication scholars have developed a range of methods and analytical frameworks to discover and analyse disinformation campaigns. The use of social network analysis (SNA) to find and map coordinated behavioural patterns has become increasingly popular and demonstrated effective results. However, these methods are designed for text and behavioural but miss an important aspect of disinformation campaigns: coordinated image-sharing. This paper examine this gap by analysing a large-scale dataset of tweets using advanced SNA to map coordinated retweeting behaviour and coordinated image-sharing. We show that coordinated image-sharing is both more widespread and different in structure to other forms of coordination. This is important because it highlights a major gap in research, where computational methods are not suited to detecting and analysing the scale and scope of visual disinformation on platforms like Twitter. To address this, we suggest new methods to complement existing approaches, using machine learning to detect image similarity. The paper concludes with a reflection of limitations and suggestions for the next steps. Guangnan ZhuTimothy GrahamDaniel Whelan-ShamyRobert Fleet
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13519EXPLORING PARENTS’ KNOWLEDGE OF DARK DESIGN AND ITS IMPACT ON CHILDREN’S DIGITAL WELL-BEING
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13395
Dark design (also known as deceptive design; Colin et al., 2018 and dark patterns; Mathur et al., 2019) is evidenced by “a user interface carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do” (Brignull, 2022; page 1). Much dark design is constructed with monetization as the primary goal- even in spaces without ecommerce design (e.g., free-to-play apps representing >95% of all mobile apps; Fitton et al. 2021). Many recent dark design strategies are also oriented towards collecting user information. Concerns about children’s vulnerability to inappropriate online marketing and economic fraud, and the impact of organisational data collection upon children’s privacy are increasing (European Commission, 2022; OECD, 2011; OFCOM, 2022). Regulators have begun to recognize, challenge, and fine deceptive design practices aimed at children (e.g., $245 million Epic Games settlement; FTC 2022), however, the scope and extent of dark design practices is such that regulators alone cannot safeguard children from such practices. Parents, who are widely understood to be primarily responsible for children’s online experiences, and children themselves, need to be mindful of and resistant to dark design practices in online spaces. With this in mind, this paper explores the following questions: (a) What is the influence of dark design (1) across mediums (e.g., apps, video games, social media platforms, websites) and (2) across differently-aged children? (b) To what extent are parents aware of their children’s exposure to dark design and the risks such exposure poses? (c) How effective are marketplace and regulatory controls? Claire BessantLaurel Aynne CookLuei Lin OngAlexa FoxMariea Grubbs HoyPingping GanEmma NottinghamBeatriz PereiraStacey Steinberg
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13395ANTECEDENTS OF PRIVACY PROTECTION BEHAVIORS AT THE VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL LEVELS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13393
Internet users face privacy threats when using online services. Privacy protection behaviors, such as adjusting privacy settings, can alleviate some of these threats. Research shows that individuals’ privacy protection behaviors (PPBs) depend on their socio-demographics characteristics, digital engagement, privacy concerns, and online privacy literacy (OPL). In addition, it has been suggested that due to the complexity of privacy issues online, an adequate level of OPL is required to translate privacy concerns into protective actions. Although previous research examined the antecedents of PPBs at a general level, it has rarely made a clear distinction and comparison between PPBs aimed toward the practices of institutions (vertical level) and those aimed toward other internet users (horizontal level). This is somewhat surprising given that many scholars underscored the importance of context in online privacy-related matters. Therefore, this study compared the antecedents of PPBs at the general, vertical, and horizontal levels. To this end, we tested three models to examine how socio-demographic characteristics, digital engagement, privacy concerns, and OPL influence PPBs at the general, vertical, and horizontal levels, and assessed whether OPL moderates the relationship between privacy concerns and PPBs at different levels. The models were tested using linear regression on a nation-wide sample of 1,015 internet users aged 18+ from Slovenia. The analysis revealed important differences between the levels in case of gender, age, and privacy concerns, but not OPL. Jošt BartolVasja VehovarAndraž Petrovčič
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13393EVERYDAY HATE ON FACEBOOK: VISUAL MISOGYNY AND THE ANTI-FEMINIST MOVEMENT IN INDIA
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13391
The #metoo movement has been one of the key social movements which has ushered in a change in structural relations in the society. In the Indian context, the movement has meant giving a powerful platform to women address generations of sexual assault in the Indian society. However, the #metoo movement has also witnessed a counter-response from the growing online ‘men’s rights activists’ (MRA) community. This study focuses on the online presence of MRA movement in India and the practice of everyday visual misogyny on their Facebook pages. I specifically focus on the public Facebook page of Save Indian Family Movement. The paper focuses on visual posts like images in form of memes and distorted news clips shared on their public page with the aim of capturing visual misogyny. The selection criteria were to manually collect all posts with an image for a duration of three months (17 October, 2022 – 21 January, 2023). I focus on this timeframe to cover the three months after Justice Chandrachud--who is not seen favourably amongst the MRA community for his progressive judgements --was appointed as the new Chief Justice of India. The dataset of images only contains either memes or cartoons or news clips. I employ an iterative multimodal critical discourse analysis approach to analyse the visual posts and categorise them based on the schema of explicit and implicit misogyny developed by Strathern and Pfeffer (2022). The findings suggest majority of the visual posts fall within the implicit misogyny category. Anand Badola
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13391A RIVER OF DATA RUNS THROUGH IT: EXAMINING URBAN CIRCULATIONS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13404
There is a deepening need for dialogue between (digital) urbanists and Internet Studies scholarship. In this paper we are interested in "urbanizing" Internet Studies by thinking about how digital infrastructures create and control circulations, movement, flows, and streams within urban contexts. More specifically, we think about circulations and concentrations of natural, human, and digital resources by way of Urban Political Ecology to better understand smart cities, digital urban labor, and Anthropocene literatures. As data, infrastructures, apps, capital, and natural phenomena concentrate in cities, and are instantiated to create and constrain flows and circulations, we contend that Internet Studies can play a key role in analyzing and understanding these new socio-technical entanglements. Drawing on Nost and Goldstein's notion of "data infrastructures", we think about how the materiality of data and digital technologies shape cities, and cities shape data and technologies. We suggest several conceptual and methodological overlaps with Urban Political Ecology, to signal what an urbanized Internet Studies, concentrated on circulations and flows, might look like. Ryan BurnsMorgan Mouton
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13404THEORIZING ENVIRONMENTAL MEDIATION THROUGH IRELAND'S PEATLANDS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13402
In colonial and postcolonial Ireland, boglands were seen as "wastelands" to be "improved" by large-scale enterprise. Today, they are strategic landscapes for carbon sequestration and climate solutions, both for the state and multinationals located in Ireland. Various contemporary projects, co-funded by industry and state partners, have facilitated the expansion and proliferation of sensing, monitoring, and mapping technologies across Ireland's bogs to measure and maximize their value in these economies. However, by doing so, they are laying the foundations for a "green grab" of Ireland's land resources by tech companies. This paper situates the historical resource and conservation landscape of Ireland’s peat boglands within their emerging role in datafied “green” revolutions. Emphasizing the stakes of land, resources, technologies, and research institutions within green transitions, the paper theorizes peat bogs an emerging site of digital climate solutionism. In doing so, I offer a framework for understanding resource landscapes in so-called “post-extractive” contexts where networked forms of extraction are innovated through public/private technoscientific research at the intersections of digital technology and ecosystemic interactions between geologies, atmospheres, and cultures. Bringing together literature from environmental media studies, STS, and geography, and performing participant observation and discourse analysis on emerging projects of peatland science in academic and industry settings, I theorize how “environmental mediation” offers an aperture for understanding how digital technologies network landscapes towards “ecosystem services” and other capital-driven climate projects. Patrick Brodie
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13402VICARIOUS NOSTALGIA? PLAYING RETROGAMES FOSTERS AN APPRECIATION FOR GAMING HISTORY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13400
In recent research, video games have been implicated as vehicles for feelings of nostalgia. Retrogames present a unique context in which to explore the elicitation of nostalgia, especially historical nostalgia among younger gamers who may lack first-hand experience with older games and gaming technologies. As part of a larger study investigating nostalgia and retrogames, n = 102 younger individuals wrote briefly about their thoughts and feelings after playing the game Double Dragon II, a video game representative of the “Beat ‘em Up” genre popular in the 1990s. Via a thematic analysis, we identified eight themes clustered into three groups: retrogames as unique experiences, retrogames and important others, and retrogames and the self. Players connected their feelings of nostalgia to distinctive features of retrogames and the experience of playing them, social thoughts, and recollections (mostly involving close friends and family), and their own personal identities via autobiographical memory. The present findings align with previous research on nostalgia more broadly and illustrate some unique aspects of nostalgic experiences evoked by retrogames. Our data have implications for how younger players take up and experience video game history through replaying retrogames of yesteryear, and might explain the enduring and increasing popularity of retrogames among myriad gaming cohorts. Furthermore, this research adds conceptual refinement to historical nostalgia (nostalgia for bygone eras), and introduces the notion of vicarious nostalgia as a perception of how others (such as parents and older siblings) would experience and make sense of older media content from their respective generations. Nicholas David BowmanMegan CondisKoji YoshimuraEmily Bohaty
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13400PRACTICES AND PARTICIPATION OF MARGINALISED YOUTH IN NON-FORMAL AND DIGITALISED EDUCATIONAL ARRANGEMENTS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13398
Educational inequality is prevalent in Germany and depends on different levels of social, economic and cultural capital (Bourdieu 1987). Yet, non-formal and informal educational arrangements are increasingly considered relevant to tackle those inequalities, specifically when it comes digitalised societies (Jeong et al. 2018). Non-formal educational providers increasingly target marginalised youth to reduce educational inequalities. However, those programmes have scarcely been researched. The question emerges, whether non-formal digitialised educational arrangements succeed at enabling educational participation of marginalised youth. In comparing two non-formal educational institutions, the research project “DILABoration” identifies conditions under which marginalised youth are able to profit off of those providers’ programmes and reconstructs them on a subjective level. In an ethnographic and reconstructive approach, a) different conditions in non-formal educational arrangements, b) learning and educational processes, specifically respective digital media use as well as c) the accessibility of participation within those arrangements are being investigated from a marginalised youths’ perspective. In order to empirically reconstruct the mechanisms of educational participation, the participants’ and employees’ practices within those arrangements are examined through participatory observation and videography. The data is analysed through Grounded Theory Methodology (Strauss/Corbin) as well as Artefact Analysis (Lueger / Froschauer 2018). Situational Analysis (Clarke/Washburn/Friese 2018) is applied in order to visualise constellations and relations between different human and non-human entities. Additionally, group discussions with non-participants of the programmes help identifying conditions that enable or constrain participation. Eva Maria BosseAmelie Wiese
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13398DATA REPRESENTATION AS EPISTEMOLOGICAL RESISTANCE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13396
Over the last two decades quantitative data representation has moved from a specialization of the sciences, economics, and statistics, to becoming commonplace in settings of democratic governance and community decision making. The dominant norms of those fields of origin are not connected to the governance and activism settings data is now used in, where practices emphasize empowerment, efficacy, and engagement. This has created ongoing harms and exclusion in a variety of well-documented settings. In this paper I critique the singular way of knowing embodied and charts and graphs, and apply the theories of epistemological pluralism and extended epistemology to argue for a larger toolbox of data representation. Through three concrete case studies of data representations created by activists I argue that social justice movements can embrace a broader set of approaches, practicing creative data representation as epistemological resistance. Through learning from these ongoing examples the fields of data literacy, open data, and data visualization can help create a broader toolbox for data representation. This is necessary to create a pluralistic practice of bringing people together around data in social justice settings. Rahul Bhargava
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13396THE INSURRECTIONIST PLAYBOOK: JAIR BOLSONARO AND THE NATIONAL CONGRESS OF BRAZIL
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13394
In this paper we unpack the 2022 Brazilian Presidential campaign marked by multiple claims of electoral fraud and support for a coup d’état by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro. We identify the narrative frames underpinning the insurrectionist playbook by analyzing Bolsonaro’s statements during the presidential campaign. We subsequently test the penetration of this playbook on members of the Brazilian National Congress during the campaign trail and the transition of power to the opposition candidate, when pro-Bolsonaro protesters attempted to overthrow the Federal Government. Our analyses lend support to the hypothesis that the coup d’état was not successful due to the dwindling support beyond the hard-core Bolsonaro base. Our results also show that the insurrectionist playbook, largely centered on the blueprint of false claims of electoral fraud, can be monitored through the public statements of elected officials. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and recommendations for future research. Marco BastosRaquel Recuero
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13394TRENDING RESISTANCE: A STUDY OF THE TIKTOK #DEINFLUENCING PHENOMENON.
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13392
Starting from January 2023, a new trend gained momentum on TikTok: It is called #deinfluencing, and it collects a series of videos which criticise the consumerist logic of the influencer industry and its tendency to overconsumption, as well as the platforms’ architectures that further fuel these processes. This contribution aims at investigating the #deinfluencing trend on TikTok to analyse to what extent it represents a form of resistance to issues of overconsumption and consumerism. I argue that the deinfluencing phenomenon is an example of how forms of resistance are becoming “trending”, that is, not only currently popular or widely discussed online, but also increasingly intertwined with the affordances and algorithmic nature of TikTok. The empirical research is based on a digital method approach and qualitative data analysis techniques. After collecting data from hashtags such as “#deinfluencing” and “#antihaul”, a content analysis aimed at highlighting the emerging themes in the trend has been performed. The results show that the deinfluencing trend is composed of three main categories of content: resistance; consumerist reappropriation; and trend-surfing. Ultimately, the analysis of the deinfluencing trend shows the different ways in which resistance becomes “trending”, meaning intertwined and progressively mitigated by the logic and architecture of TikTok. It is exactly in the trending nature of these forms of resistance that lies the highly controversial and potentially problematic nature of deinfluencing: a form of resistance to and through the platform’s logic, as well as to and through consumption. Lucia Bainotti
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13392GROUPS ARE EASY, FEDERATING IS HARD
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13403
When Elon Musk took over Twitter in October 2022, many users sought a place of refuge, and Mastodon was seen as an early candidate. Mastodon is part of the Fediverse, a decentralized network of social media services. But people arriving in this network were confused, a problem that many chalked up to a clunky interface and a confusing user experience. Such a reading of the situation misses something much more fundamental. This reaction to Mastodon signals something important about a narrowed network imagination amongst some users, a narrowed imagination that is not shared by all. On Mastodon, users engage in labor-intensive federating practices – they manage both the internal dynamics of their home server and that server’s relations to other servers. Groups are relatively easy to create, but federation can be quite difficult. Federation faces a number of obstacles, but some groups, including far-right political activists, have effectively responded to those obstacles. Researchers should study not only federated social media but also the federating practices used by groups both online and offline, practices that move past the easy labor of group formation into the more difficult work of federation. James J Brown
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13403VIEWS OF THE WORLD AND LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE OF NEWS: RESEARCHING YOUTH, NEWS, AND CITIZENSHIP IN PORTUGAL
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13401
A central objective of a Portuguese research project on Young people, News and Digital citizenship – YouNDigital (PTDC/COM-OUT/0243/2021) is to grab news definitions and their connection with youth’s (aged 15-24) democratic needs. The project relies on complementary methods to approach the senses of what news is and how young people get in touch with the world. We developed a representative online survey in Portugal (N=1300) where we explored how young people reach their notion of the world. The survey reflected the existence of several nationalities, such as Angolan, Cape Verdeans, Mozambican and Brazilian (official Portuguese-speaking countries), and also Ukrainian. It also included two open research questions about how respondents build their views of the world and how they see the future of news. In this presentation, we will rely on these identified nationalities and their answers to these questions. Data points to the envision that technology will continue to have a paramount sophistication and intervention in the production of news in the coming future (they predict evolutions such as a futuristic technology in the form of an intraocular device for searching news), but they also reveal negative feelings towards the speed at which information is produced and circulates, opening way for the increasing of manipulative, and untrusty information production (they claim for more trustworthy news while at the same time they see a pathway for the news that has no salvation).Maria José BritesTeresa Sofia CastroMargarida ManetaAndreia Pinto de Sousa
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13401HACK YOUR AGE: OLDER ADULTS AS PROVOCATIVE AND SPECULATIVE IOT CO-DESIGNERS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13399
This research explores whether the co-design of provocative prototypes with older adults can scaffold critical thought concerning ethics, trustworthiness, security and privacy of age-oriented Internet of Things (IoT) products and services, and associated data-driven technologies (DDT). By inviting 15 adults defining themselves as ‘experiencing or anticipating old age’ to co-design IoT and DDT which addressed their hopes and fears for the future, we encouraged them to imagine a revolution in ‘technology for aging’. Three workshops utilized theatre and design research approaches including speculative design (Dunne, 2013) and co-design of provocative prototypes and social design fiction (Pilling, 2019), to stimulate discussion around imagined futures for aging and technology. Participants modelled the internet as they understood and imagined it. They were then introduced to sensors, actuators and machine learning through interactive demonstrations. Four randomly formed groups ideated ways these technologies could be applied to earlier identified hopes and fears for the future of aging. Creative technologists then created prototypes of these ideas over two weeks of feedback and iteration with participants. Participants wrote and performed performances incorporating these prototypes, which explored cybersecurity and cyberharm (Agrafiotis, 2019). Six participants also partook in post-workshop semi-structured interviews. Methods developed in this research scaffolded critical thought concerning the ethics, trustworthiness, security and privacy of age oriented IoT, and associated DDT, regardless of experience or existing knowledge. Participants found it easy to interrogate the ethics, privacy and security of their speculations because, while they may not have been technically scalable or feasible, they understood them. Joe BourneNaomi JacobsPaul CoultonClare DuffyRupert GoodwinsTom Macpherson-Pope
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13399ALGORITHMS, AESTHETICS AND THE CHANGING NATURE OF CULTURAL CONSUMPTION ONLINE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13397
This paper examines the development of digital subcultures and microtrends in a social media landscape increasingly driven by algorithms. We explore the increasing proliferation of subcultures defined by aesthetic categories which we refer to as “microtrends. In this paper we draw from a combined mixed-methods exploration– a visual discourse analysis taken in conjunction with critical technoculture analysis (CDTA) – of content shared to the popular hashtag #aesthetic across three different algorithmically driven social media platforms: TikTok, Instagram and Youtube. We aim to extend scholarship on digital subculture formation by examining the intersection of identity formation, algorithmic capitalism and user practices surrounding microtrends through the lens of user engagement and self identity guided by three central questions: (1) What tactics and practices constitute user participation in microtrends? (2) How does user engagement with microtrends function as an act of relational self expression? (3) What are user discourses surrounding microtrend participation? Three novel user practices are identified - aesthetic consistency, aesthetic anxiety, and aesthetic creation- which when taken together comprise of a process that we term “self-discretization” wherein users “do the work” of abstracting and fragmenting their identities for the sake of attaining visibility within a datafied digital environment. Ultimately this paper argues that in an increasingly algorithmic cultural landscape users begin to internalize not just the messaging, but also the logics of algorithmic capitalism and regimes of datafication. Sara BimoAparajita Bhandari
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13397#STOPMENSTRUALSHAMING: XIAOHONGSHU USERS’ ONLINE ADVOCACY FOR WOMEN’S ISSUES IN CHINA
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13427
This paper investigates how social media users advocate for women's issues in China, focusing on the activism against menstrual shaming on the social media platform Xiaohongshu, a culturally significant but understudied platform used primarily by women. With women accounting for 90.41% of active users, Xiaohongshu provides a unique social media environment that shapes the way users engage with feminist issues. However, despite the growing literature on digital feminism in China and the surging popularity and significance of Xiaohongshu in the Chinese social media ecosystem, no studies so far have examined the feminist activism on this platform. Our study contributes to this gap by exploring the discourse around menstrual shaming on Xiaohongshu, as a lens into the dynamics of activism on this female-oriented platform. Analyzing 329 posts and 10,336 comments under the hashtag #StopMenstrualShaming on Xiaohongshu, our study foregrounds the salient role of Xiaohongshu in helping women express their feminist values in an online space that they perceive as safe and intimate. In doing so, we employ the conceptual framework of hashtag activism, which refers to the development and spread of online activism with tangible results in the physical and digital worlds. Shining a spotlight on this significant but understudied platform, we illuminate the dynamics of Chinese digital feminism, especially the formation of solidarity, relatability and collective identity on a female-oriented social media platform. Yuejie GuYing YangSaiyinjiyaWanyu WuQingyun ChenSiqi ChenIoana Literat
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13427ALTERNATIVE VISIONS FOR THE DNS: CORE, IAHC, AND THE POSSIBILITY FOR EXPANDED GTLDS IN EARLY GOVERNANCE POLICY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13425
In 1994, U.S. President Clinton stated that the commercialization of the internet was a “top priority” for his administration. The domain name system (DNS), which was developed to deal with the growing unwieldiness of the commercial internet, was an early battleground in shaping the values of early internet governance policies. The system would include highly sought after addresses in generic top-level domains (gTLDS) that ended in .com, .gov, .org, .edu, and so on. Below this were second-level domains and country codes which ended web addresses in sequences like .uk, .jp, .ca, etc. This model raised legal and economic questions about trademarks, intellectual property, and the global distribution of addresses on top level domains. Technical experts were wary of the limitations of the proposed system, particularly given the potential to expand the number of gTLDs. While many groups responded to U.S. governance policy, a number of non-profit associations were particular vocal in their critique, most notably the Internet Council of Registrars (CORE), the International Ad Hoc Committee (IAHC), and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) represented by Jon Postel. As the internet transitioned from a network used primarily by government and educational entities to a mass medium, there was a potential for revolutionary modes of communication, information sharing, education, creative expression, and a revolutionary, de-centralized structure of governance. The DNS debate resulted instead in support of predictable structures of power and a failure to realize that potential. Meghan Grosse
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13425DISCUSSING HEALTH WITHOUT ADULTS – YOUTH VOICES IN PEER-LED DISCUSSIONS ON TEENAGERS’ SUBREDDITS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13423
Contemporary digital health research, policy and practice often engage young people in voicing their opinions with a participatory approach. Simultaneously, young people organise themselves on peer-led platforms like Reddit to talk about health without adults. Peer-led discussions on platforms like Reddit gives us access to a new perspective on how young people understand and experience health. This study investigates youth voices on health in teenagers’ subreddits on Reddit and responds to three research questions: how youth voices about health matters are represented in peer-led discussions; how the platform supports plural voices; and how the Bakhtinian dialogical account of voice can offer an alternative of non-unified, heterogeneous voices of young people to shortcomings of some participatory research, service, and policymaking. This study used unobtrusive digital ethnography and extant data collection methods to sample 50 posts related to physical, mental, and sexual health. Thematic analysis was conducted with grounded theory principles. Youth plural voices revealed different conceptualisations of health and diverse narratives about actors like parents, teachers, healthcare professionals and technologies involved in health experiences. Redditors engage in humorous and factual discussions equally and share both positive and negative health experiences. There is no unity in youth health meanings, but plurality and heterogeneity deserve more recognition and support. Analysing Reddit allows us to know what and how young people talk about health with their peers. Learning from the Reddit environment, adults may redefine their ideas of youth health to be more youth-centred and better align with young people’s needs. Martyna Gliniecka
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13423AN INTIMATE REVOLUTION: DIGITAL PRACTICES OF INTIMACY DURING COVID-19 AND BEYOND
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13421
This paper investigates the changes in digital practices of intimacy during the COVID-19 social distancing period in the UK, and whether these transformations have persisted in the ‘new normal’. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, collecting quantitative and qualitative data from 824 adults who used dating apps during the pandemic, and conducting 60 in-depth interviews. The study aimed to understand the digital intimate practices of heterosexual and LGBT+ communities during and after COVID-19. First, we describe (using both descriptive statistics and excerpts from participant interviews) the changes to practices of digital intimacy during COVID-19. Second, we will explore the distribution of these changes among communities. In particular, we describe the differences between heterosexual and LGBT+ respondents, and between white and ethnic minority respondents. Third, we explore how these changes have endured after COVID-19. In particular, we will explore how changes to what people look for in their app use endured or returned to ‘pre-covid’ The paper concludes by arguing that dating app's increasing status as health actors, particularly during a pandemic, necessitates more research in this area. This study provides insights into how digital practices of intimacy have transformed during COVID-19 and whether these transformations have endured in the ‘new normal’. Understanding these changes is essential to adequately support people’s emotional and sexual well-being during and after a time of crisis. Jaime Garcia IglesiasBrian HeaphyNeta Yodovich
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13421THE HASHTAG SYLLABUS AS CLASS ASSIGNMENT: FROM CRITICAL INFORMATION LITERACY TO CULTURAL CRITIQUE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13426
In the immediate aftermath of the 2014 murder of 18-year Michael Brown in Missouri, hashtags like #ferguson, #justiceformikebrown, and #handsupdontshoot begin trending on Twitter. At the same time, Marcia Chatelain, Georgetown University Professor of History and American Studies, began crowdsourcing materials for educators trying to address what happened in their classrooms using the hashtag #fergusonsyllabus. What resulted was a list of highly interdisciplinary and multimedia sources including scholarly texts, news stories, songs, poems, films, public addresses, and children’s books. Chatelain’s call spoke both to the present crisis, the murder of a Black teenager by police, and to the historical and cultural context in which this shooting happened. The efforts of Chatelain and the community that came together around this hashtag expanded our understanding of information production and curation and the function of a syllabus beyond the college classroom. In introducing our undergraduate classes to the idea of the hashtag syllabus, we attempt to engage our students in practices of information literacy with the hope of providing them tools to look critically at the inequities that permeate academic and non-academic spaces. Here, we explore the ways in which this format operates in interdisciplinary social science programs and the ways in which it supports unique learning objectives in both introductory and upper-level courses. In doing so, we hope to engage in pedagogical praxis that connects our fields and our students with questions of social justice and to do so in a way that prepares them for meaningful civic engagement. Meghan GrosseSara Clarke-De Reza
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13426PLATFORM POWER, XR, AND THE METAVERSE: NEW CHALLENGES OR OLD STRUCTURES?
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13424
While social media platforms continue to dominate the ways in which people connect using computational devices and digital media, a transition towards more immersive platforms and experiences is underway. Extended reality (XR) is the umbrella term for media that enable experiences in augmented, mixed, and virtual reality. Through XR technologies, new digital spaces are being developed that combine features of existing digital platforms with elements of the immersiveness of gaming, sometimes referred to informally as ‘the metaverse’. Notably, many of the corporations behind the dominant social media platforms are active in the XR economy. Meta has garnered much attention in this regard, but Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Sony have all either entered the market or have been reported as having XR/metaverse ambitions. Through a multiple-case study of three companies—Meta, Epic Games/Unity Engine and ROBLOX—this paper maps out key dimensions of the emerging metaverse economy and shows how the platform characteristics of XR providers, similar to the current social media economy, can enable the concentration of social and economic power around a few actors. We propose that in the transition to a more immersive digital era, to enable a competitive, vibrant and fair XR economy, policymaking and governance must proactively address the issue of concentrated platform power. The paper concludes with a discussion of potential policy and regulatory pathways for taking up this challenge. Joanne Elizabeth GrayMorten Bay
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13424THE INTIMACY TRIPLE BIND: STRUCTURAL INEQUALITIES AND RELATIONAL LABOUR IN THE INFLUENCER INDUSTRY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13422
The careers of social media content creators, or influencers, live or die by their ability to cultivate and maintain an invested audience-community. To this end, they are encouraged to practise relational labour (Baym, 2018) to build authentic self-brands and intimacy with audiences. Drawing on a longitudinal ethnographic study of the London influencer industry (2017-2023), this paper examines relational labour through an intersectional feminist lens, foregrounding the ways in which structural inequalities shape relationships between creators and their audiences. This research found that the tolls of managing audience relationships are higher for marginalised creators—especially those who make critical leftist and feminist content—who find themselves on an uneven playing field in the challenges they face as well as the coping strategies at their disposal. Creators employed four key tactics to navigate relational labour and boundaries with audiences: (1) leaning into making rather than being content; (2) (dis)engagement with anti-fans through silence and digital self-harm; (3) retreating into private community spaces, away from the exposure of public platforms; and (4) turning off public comments. Marginalised creators find themselves in an intimacy triple bind, already at higher risk of trolling and harassment, yet under increased pressure to perform relational labour, adversely opening them up to further harms in the form of weaponised intimacy. Findings highlight the individualisation of risk and harm as a structural norm in the influencer industry, raising serious questions about the lack of accountability and responsibility that platforms show towards the creators who generate profit for them. Zoë Glatt
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13422VERNACULAR PEDAGOGIES FOR THE SYNTHETIC MEDIA AGE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13460
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. Anthony McCoskerLuke Heemsbergen
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13460CONSTRUCTING AND MARKETING SEXUAL FANTASY: ANALYZING THE SOCIAL MEDIA OF SEX ROBOTS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13458
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. Annette Marie Masterson
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13458CARE, INC.: HOW BIG TECH RESPONDED TO THE END OF ROE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13456
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. Zelly C MartinDominique A Montiel ValleSamantha Shorey
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13456THE POLITICS AND EVOLUTION OF TIKTOK AS PLATFORM TOOL
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13454
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. Kaushar MahetajiDavid Nieborg
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13454'IF WE LOOK AT IT FROM AN LGBT POINT OF VIEW…’ MOBILIZING LGBTQ+ STAKEHOLDERS TO QUEER ALGORITHMIC IMAGINARIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13467
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. David MylesAlex ChartrandStefanie Duguay
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13467"I WORKED SO HARD, AND I STILL DIDN'T SUCCEED”: CODING BOOTCAMP EXPERIENCES OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13465
Coding bootcamps are intensive training programs that aim to turn adults with no computer programming experience into professional software developers in as little as 12 to 16 weeks. In both the US and the UK, coding bootcamps are positioned as an alternative pathway into the tech “pipeline” for groups who are traditionally excluded from computing careers (Schnell, 2019; UK Digital Strategy, 2022). Framed as a form of “coding equity”, bootcamps are said to provide “transformative access” for participants and have even been characterized as a form of social justice activism (Rea, 2022). However, our ongoing comparative study about coding bootcamps in the US and UK indicates that the benefits of attending a coding bootcamp accrue disproportionately across different groups. Drawing upon ethnographic, interview, and survey data, this work-in-progress paper focuses on the bootcamp experiences of people with disabilities, who were more likely to experience unfair bias and/or exclusion and are less likely to have experienced employment-related benefits than people without disabilities. This paper discusses some of the contributing factors to these outcomes and explores the impact that these experiences have on bootcamp students with disabilities. In doing so, it casts some doubt on the “transformative” possibilities of bootcamps for marginalized groups. Although some bootcamps declare their “support” for “people with disabilities and neurodiversities” (Northcoders, n.d.), our study indicates that even if and when this support exists, it falls short of what people with disabilities need to thrive in a bootcamp setting. Kate MiltnerGitit Kadar-SatatEmily Ashton
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13465BELIEFS, VALUES AND EMOTIONS IN PRACTITIONERS’ ENGAGEMENTS WITH LEARNING ANALYTICS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13463
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. Itzelle Medina PereaJo BatesMonika FratczakHelen KennedyErinma Ochu
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13463MENTAL HEALTH AND THE DIGITAL CARE ASSEMBLAGE: MODERATION PRACTICES & USER EXPERIENCES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13461
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. Anthony McCoskerJane FarmerPeter Kamstra
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13461TECHNOLOGICAL PRACTICES OF REFUSAL: RADICAL REIMAGINATION IN M EIFLER’S COMPUTATIONAL PROSTHETICS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13459
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. Emma May
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13459FEMINIST QUEEN OR CONSPIRACY THEORIST? FEMALE SPREADERS OF WOMEN'S HEALTH DISINFORMATION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13457
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. Zelly C MartinInga K TrauthigSamuel C Woolley
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13457TECHNO-POLITICAL PROMISES OF PANDEMIC MANAGEMENT: A SITUATION OF APPS AND EXCEL IN PUBLIC HEALTH
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13455
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. Monique MannLuke HeemsbergenCatherine BennettAnthony McCosker
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13455THE ALGORITHMIC MODERATION OF SEXUAL EXPRESSION: PORNHUB, PAYMENT PROCESSORS AND CSAM
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13453
Pornography platforms are increasingly required by payment processor business partners to mitigate harm in their content management systems through algorithmic moderation. Demands that adult merchants incorporate these tools are not proportional to instances of harmful content, but a response to the widespread conflation of pornography with harm and risk online. This paper explores co-governance by payment processors calling for algorithmic tools through the case of Pornhub, asking: what standards are required by financial firms, how are these enforced on platforms, and what effects does this arrangement have on porn content? I open with key context regarding the deplatforming of sex, antiporn campaigning and constructions of harm through 'reputational risk’. Following this, I detail financial firms infrastructural influence in platform co-governance. Next, a close reading of adult merchant terms identifies specific clauses calling for algorithmic moderation. Concluding this issue mapping, I provide a taxonomy of moderation tools in place on Pornhub. I close with an issue discussion to consider AI's positioning as a regulatory solution, CSAM data ethics, moderator labour, and the many technical problems obscured by promises of safety through automated content management systems. The resulting review of algorithmic measures enforced by financial firms offers a detailed case of the opaque governance conditions imperilling sexual expression across porn platforms. Maggie MacDonald
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13453CRUISING TIKTOK: USING ALGORITHMIC FOLK KNOWLEDGE TO EVADE CISHETERONORMATIVE CONTENT MODERATION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13466
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. Alexander Monea
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13466#AVERAGEYETCONFIDENTMEN: CHINESE STAND-UP COMEDY AND FEMINIST DISCOURSE ON DOUYIN
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13464
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. Xingyuan MengIoana Literat
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13464INTERNET GOVERNANCE AND MORAL ENTREPRENEURS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13462
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. Zachary McDowellKatrin Tiidenberg
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13462COMMUNICATING CARE - HEALING, THERAPY AND INFLUENCER PRACTICES ON SOCIAL MEDIA
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13492
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. Maria SchreiberNatalie Ann Hendry
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13492PLATFORM PR – THE PUBLIC MODERATION OF PLATFORM VALUES THROUGH TIKTOK FOR GOOD
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13490
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. Rebecca Scharlach
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13490DIGITAL LABOR UNDER THE STATE/CAPITALIST DUOPOLY: STATE LABOR AND PLAYFUL WORKAHOLICS IN CHINESE DIGITAL SPACE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13499
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. Qingyue Sun
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13499THE EMERGENT R/ANTIWORK REVOLUTION AND MANAGERIAL ALLIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13497
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. Ari Stillman
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13497STRATEGIC (IN)VISIBILITY: HOW MARGINALISED CREATORS NAVIGATE THE RISKS AND CONSTRAINTS OF ONLINE VISIBILITY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13495
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. Hanne Marleen StegemanCarolina AreThomas Poell
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13495THE GREAT RESET: “COUNTERPOWER” IN THE CONTEXT OF MEDIA CONCENTRATION AND PLATFORM DEPENDENCE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13493
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. Theresa Josephine Seipp
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13493THE VALUE AFFORDANCES OF SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT FEATURES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13491
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. Rebecca ScharlachBlake Hallinan
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13491EVOLVING SPATIALITIES OF DIGITAL LIFE: TROUBLING THE BOUNDARIES OF THE SMART CITY/HOME DIVIDES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13500
Blunt and Sheringham (2019) call for home-city geographies but do not consider the role of digital technologies in mediating these relations (Koch and Miles, 2021). Digital geographers have largely examined manifestations of the digital city (smart city, platform urbanism, etc.) and the digital home separately. This paper explores the question of the smart home/city by reading it through a series of established analytical frames for reflecting on the relationship between domestic and urban space, namely: governance, domestication, thresholds, and dwelling. The first two call attention to the movement of certain activities, relations, or processes across traditionally understood boundaries between domestic and urban spaces. The third lens, thresholds, considers the ways boundaries between domestic and urban space are not simply transgressed but are actively re-negotiated through the new digital mediations. The fourth lens, dwelling, moves beyond a focus on such boundaries or divisions to instead highlight the ambiguity and indeterminacy of everyday life. Each lens opens a distinct set of questions about the evolving spatialities of digital life and the ways they are enacted, negotiated, and potentially contested. Miriam E SweeneyCasey Lynch
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13500GET WITH THE PROGRAM: PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING AND THE DATAFICATION OF PODCAST AUDIENCES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13498
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. John L Sullivan
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13498THE CONVENIENCE STORE REVOLUTION: COMPUTER NETWORKS, LOGISTICS, AND THE REINVENTION OF RETAIL IN JAPAN
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13496
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. Marc Steinberg
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13496DEPLATFORMING THE SMART CITY: GIVING RESIDENTS CONTROL OVER THEIR PERSONAL DATA
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13494
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. Gwen Lisa Shaffer
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13494DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES AND REVOLUTION IN AFRICA: COMPLEXITIES, AMBIVALENCES, AND CONTEXTUAL REALITIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13524
Introductory statement The rise of digital technologies has brought about significant changes in revolutionary projects across Africa. The impact of these technologies on social movements and activism is complex and multi-faceted. This panel examines the role of technology in shaping African revolutionary projects, such as the use of social media platforms for mobilisation and coordination, and the challenges around issues like manipulation and exploitation. It also delves into the diverse goals and aspirations that drive these movements, from seeking social justice to reorganising social orders. By discussing these topics, the panel aims to provide attendees with a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between technology and revolution in Africa and the different discourses that shape these movements. Relationship between the papers The first paper focuses on Kenya and examines the role of digital technologies, specifically social media, in promoting socio-political change and revolution. The author notes that Kenya has been regarded as one of the technological hubs in Africa, and the increased use of internet technologies has become part of the everyday life of most citizens, especially in urban areas. Social media has become essential for political participation in Kenya, particularly among marginalised communities such as the youth and women. The author highlights the dynamics of protests and socio-political issues that shape socio-political movements, emphasising the use of social media in politically led and grassroots-led protests. On the other hand, paper B looks at Nigeria and explores the forms of civic engagement and citizenship performance on Twitter spaces leading up to the country's 2023 national elections. The author uses the lens of digital citizenship to situate citizens as politically engaged subjects who gather and share information and make rights claims online, potentially altering the balance of power. The author acknowledges the need for contextual understanding when studying a country like Nigeria imbued with culture and diversity. The author also highlights how new media technologies facilitate African digital citizenship and the tacit and observable ways citizens experience their social and cultural context in digital environments that may be uniquely African. Paper C examines the presence of influencers and grievances among the "soro soke" generation during Nigeria's 2023 election cycle. The study aims to show the significance of influencers in the core networks of "soro soke" election tweeters and how their grievances are expressed through personalized statements of hopes, frustrations, and lifestyles that lead to collective action. Additionally, the author explores the response of leading presidential candidates to the #EndSARS movement, highlighting how the movement connected the "soro soke" generation with like-minded politicians and how resources were mobilized to support them. Paper D critiques the discourse of social media platforms driving political revolutions in Southern Africa. It rejects the technological determinism and solutionism approaches and favours theoretical toolkits such as social shaping of technologies, structuration theory and technological dramas. The paper explores digital technologies' complex roles in political struggles, acknowledging their potential for democratization, citizen participation and political voice, as well as negative impacts like digital surveillance, authoritarianism, disinformation campaigns, cyberbullying, and dark participation. It highlights the disruptive tendencies of hashtag movements in Southern Africa, examining digital technologies' positive and negative outcomes. This study contributes to understanding the relationship between digital technologies and political struggles in Southern Africa and challenges revolutionary technologies, actors, movements, and goals' rhetoric on social media. This paper examines how African youth and first-generation young African diasporas in the USA, UK, and France use social media to contest and reframe global media narratives about Africa and its people. It analyzes subversive online narratives that challenge settler colonialism legacies and global north media control. Social media provides a new frontier for disrupting media hegemonies and challenging stereotypes. The study concludes that social media facilitates protests and increases opportunities for youth engagement in collective action. African youth and diasporic communities use social media to challenge negative stereotypes and reframe global media narratives about Africa, redefining identities in the process. All 5 papers are related in that they all focus on the role of digital technologies in shaping political and social change. They explore how digital technologies are leveraged to challenge dominant narratives, amplify alternative voices, and mobilize collective action. The abstracts also share a critical perspective that seeks to move beyond deterministic and solutionist approaches to analyzing the relationship between society and technologies and instead highlight the complex and multifaceted ways in which digital technologies can enable or constrain political struggles. In addition, the abstracts focus on different geographic contexts, including Nigeria, Kenya, Southern Africa, and the diaspora in the USA, UK, and France, indicating the global reach of digital technologies in shaping political and social change. Overall, the abstracts highlight the potential of digital technologies as a tool for challenging dominant narratives and mobilizing collective action while also acknowledging the ambivalent and contested nature of their impact. Job MwauraTamar DamboOchega AtagubaAdmire MareLusike MukhongoWallace ChumaWinston Mano
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13524DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE: POLICIES, PRACTICES, AND VISIONS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13522
Environmental media scholars have long drawn attention to the physicality of digital systems, situating their work as part of the infrastructural turn (Larkin, 2013; Parks & Starosielski, 2015; Star, 1999). Contrary to the prevailing “cultural imagination of dematerialization” (Starosielski, 2015), digital supply chains – from data centers to AI systems to consumer electronics – depend on minerals, water, land, labour, and energy (Crawford, 2021; Cubitt, 2016; Hogan et al., 2022). This growth-based model of digital technology is based on assumed access to resources, implicating it in the extractive global economy shaped by ongoing colonial violence (Liboiron, 2021; Spice, 2018). Transdisciplinary scholarship on the intersection of digital technologies and the environment has looked at online organizing and digital climate change action (McLean & Fuller, 2016; Pearce et al., 2019), indigenous resistance and data sovereignty (Duarte, 2017; Kukutai & Taylor, 2016), the environmental impacts of large-scale data centers (Hogan, 2015; Velkova, 2016) and alternative social media (Laser et al., 2022), and what "responsible digitalization" could look like (Dwivedi et al., 2022). Building on already existing work that critically examines the material implications of digital infrastructures, this panel asks what environmental justice means in relation to digital technologies. Turning against the language of revolution that too often gets leveraged by Big Tech to describe the latest "disruptive" technology that is allegedly going to solve the world's problems (Geiger, 2020; Tabel, 2022), we foreground subversive practices, regulatory interventions, and grassroots organizing and vision building as emancipatory alternatives to a for-profit, monopolized internet. From a theory of change that seeks to understand and challenge the extractive nature of digital technology production from all angles, we shed light on reform, repair, refusal, and resistance as paths for transformation. Zooming in on Southeast Louisiana where hundreds of petrochemical processing and manufacturing facilities are located, the first paper examines how Internet access can be reimagined in landscapes shaped by extractive economies. The paper analyzes the challenges that activist and research groups face when using Internet of things (IoT) devices for real-time environmental sensing of air quality due to underdeveloped Internet infrastructures in a region that is becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate change. The second paper engages with the material footprint and environmental implications of computing hardware production. It looks at the "Right to Repair" as one approach that challenges corporate control over design and obsolescence of electronic devices. By comparing examples of recent legislation in the EU, India, and the US, and analyzing them through the lens of design justice and discard studies frameworks, it argues that Right to Repair needs to be complemented by a substantial change in industry norms and practices rather than simply attempting to delay the disposal through repair by consumers. The third paper examines community resistance to data centers in the United States. In the past years, activists have framed their resistance to data centers along three critiques, namely noise pollution, resource consumption, and lack of public input to permitting processes. The paper investigates how environmental justice activists use formal legal and regulatory processes such as public meetings, petitions, lawsuits, public records requests to organise against new data center developments, and the challenges they meet as part of their organising. The fourth paper presents a "feminist principle of the internet on the environment" that was developed over several years in transnational collaborative work by practitioners. It addresses the interconnections between gendered online violence against land and environmental defenders on large social media platforms and on-the-ground resistance to extractive industries and outlines a new emancipatory vision for a different internet that centers planetary care and justice for communities and ecosystems. The fifth paper presents an analysis of the Internet Architecture Board's (IAB) workshop on "Environmental Impact of Internet Applications and Systems", held online in December 2022. It uses an infrastructural lens to analyze which politics are embedded and missing from industry responses to the sector's environmental harms. While international regulatory bodies are slowly coming to terms with the environmental impacts of distributed digital networks, the paper argues that the proposed sustainability solutions are as of yet too narrow in scope. Janna FrenzelSophie ToupinJenna RuddockJen LiuFieke JansenShawna FinneganJennifer Radloff
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13522AFTER DEPLATFORMING: RETRACING CONTENT MODERATION EFFECTS ACROSS PLATFORMS AND A POST-AMERICAN WEB
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13538
Half a decade ago, social media platforms were widely perceived as revolutionary devices for maximizing political expression around the world. By opening the floodgates to expression, however, the same platforms were also accused of opening the floodgates of hate – allowing, for example, the self-claimed “revolutionary” return of ideas, speech and actors long thought to be relegated to the dustbins of history. This panel examines a three-fold revolution, namely: populist revolutions (on the right) facilitated by agnostic content moderation philosophies; the internal revolutions that platform content moderation underwent to address the political violence of the former; and the adjustments that digital methods research needs to adopt to facilitate content moderation research in a “post-API” environment. The first paper of this panel examines how Twitter’s content moderation has undergone several arbitrary changes before reaching a form of “normative plasticity”, with reinforcement techniques such as demotion and other forms of conditional content obfuscation. The second paper looks at how, despite making profound changes to prevent furthering political violence during elections, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram have tended to moderate the Brazilian elections in a dislocated fashion, turning a blind eye to Brazilian militaristic content and focusing instead on what it primarily moderates in a US context. Finally, the third paper offers a set of methods for empirical researchers to capture and study content moderation metadata over time. All three papers aim to contribute to attempts at archiving and studying speech moderation as a public good, in an international context. Emillie de KeulenaarJoão MagalhãesMarcelo Alves dos Santos JuniorRichard Rogers
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13538DIGITAL MEMORY, PANDEMIC TEMPORALITIES: REFLECTIONS ON STUDYING AND STORING CRISIS MEDIA
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13536
Digital memory studies is a field deeply attuned to social transformations, including the often abrupt and destabilizing impact of crisis events. It is also a field attuned to the role of time and temporalities in shaping how digital media propels experiences and interpretations of the past into the present and future. This panel is dedicated to bringing these two significant threads of digital memory studies research into concerted conversation by drawing on complementary case studies of the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, these projects examine how networked digital media interface with experiences of temporality, playing a fundamental role in shaping how the COVID-19 crisis is remembered and researched over time. This panel incorporates four projects that examine the relationship between crisis, memory, and digital media across complementary temporal and structural considerations. In conversation, these projects present reflections spanning personal and institutional pandemic memories; crisis time scales; and visual, sonic, and infrastructural media. Ultimately, this panel underscores the interconnectedness of crisis and temporality in digital memory studies, inviting conversation on mediated memories of disruptive events constructed research participants and researchers themselves. Chelsea Paige ButkowskiAparajita BhandariFrances CorryAdetobi Moses
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13536EXPLORING THE CONTEXTUAL COMPLEXITIES OF VIOLENCE ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS: INTERSECTIONS, IMPACTS, AND SOLUTIONS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13534
As social media platforms face increasing complexity, severity, and pervasiveness of violent content, it is of utmost importance for researchers, educators, policymakers, and users alike to regard digital violence as an imminent threat. Indeed, violent content is widely acknowledged as an inseparable element of the continuum of violence, interlinked with various other types and embodiments of harm that transcend the archaic boundaries of online and offline realms. To adequately address the increasingly complex nature of violence on digital platforms, it is paramount to understand how digital platforms may modify and amplify violent behavior and content. The initial step in such efforts is to contextualize violence within its cultural and historical settings. Accordingly, this panel explores digital manifestations of violence as experienced and perceived within specific socio-cultural contexts. The papers presented delve into four case studies from diverse socio-cultural contexts (Colombia, Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, and Syria), and touch upon pressing contemporary issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, anti-religion protest in Iran, and the recent earthquakes in Syria. These case studies aim to explore the impact and reach of various forms of violence manifested on digital platforms. Panelists unpack ways of inciting, reproducing, expressing, and countering violence, enacted through a wide variety of media practices (such as memes, tweets and viral videos) across various platforms (including TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp). In this panel we seek to build bridges and deepen our understanding of the complex and multifaceted dynamics of digital violence by exploring possible solutions for mitigating its detrimental impact. Esteban MoralesTom DivonMartin LundqvistNour Halabi
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13534WARTOK: NETWORKED SOUNDSCAPES OF MEMETIC WARFARE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13532
This panel investigates the networked soundscapes of memetic warfare on TikTok, a platform crucial in mediating the ongoing war in Ukraine since February 2022. Introduced to the public as a unique form of war programming during the first week of Russia's full-scale military invasion (Mobilio 2022), WarTok—a portmanteau of ‘TikTok’ and ‘war’—signifies "the war of super-empowered individuals armed only with smartphones" (Friedmann 2022). Producing headlines such as "TikTok's Amazing Russian-Ukraine War Videos," (Figure 1) the term necessitates critical and ethical scrutiny, not only for its sensationalist stance but also for the collapse of contexts it entails. Integrated into a platform that thrives on remixing, WarTok seamlessly intertwines on-the-ground war reporting with war propaganda—an aspect explored across all panel contributions through the lens of music. Networked Soundscapes The choice for sound as the primary step in our exploration not only derives from the platform’s logic of content creation, it also acknowledges music’s affective impact and its historical role in propaganda (Thompson & Biddle 2013). Music on TikTok serves as both an affective mediator and a highly templatable networker. Recent studies highlight the templatability of TikTok sounds, offering insights into content creators' attention-grabbing techniques (Abidin & Kaye 2021), logics of trend dilution (Bainotti et al., 2022), issue-specific remix cultures (Primig et al. 2023), and infrastructural meme collection (Rogers & Giorgi 2023). Aural linkages between templates can intersect with other platform-native modalities of expression, producing networked soundscapes. A soundscape, as we approach it by leaning into TikTok’s logic of indexing “listed” and “original” sounds, foregrounds audio as the main memetic stratifier, opening up different paths for navigating content (Geboers et al., forthcoming). Hashtags and sounds, for example, can turn into a source of mutual amplification or may remain disengaged even when united through technical means (Pilipets 2023). Feeding into contested attentional dynamics of digital media (Boler & Davis 2021), propaganda by means of TikTok sharing takes on a new dimension in a highly contested space, which is said to “raise memes to the level of infrastructure” (Zulli & Zulli 2021). Memetic Warfare Often driven by a cynical hunt for eyeballs, memetic warfare on social media taps into humor and mockery, inviting playful participation (Divon 2022), channeling disinformation (Bösch 2023), and using agitainment to captivate publics beyond the explicitly political (Tuters and Noordenbos forthcoming). In the context of war propaganda, memes become central agents of partisan bonding through recognizable templates and inscribed in-group cues (Arkenbout & Scherz 2022). TikTok music expands the toolbox of crafting memes, opening up new venues of boundary work and populist instrumentalization (Boichak & Hoskins 2022). TikTok is renowned for its ability to implant short video earworms, perceived as stickier than complete songs (Vizcaíno-Verdú & Abidin 2022). Some attribute this phenomenon to the cognitive principle that human memory retains unfinished tasks more effectively than completed ones, generating affective tension (Carson 2022). Walter J. Ong’s “secondary orality”, a concept revived by Venturini (2022), is one way to address this tension in online spaces where written words often become spoken words and where evanescence is ingrained into the logic of engagement. Foregrounding the memetic function of TikTok, the panel sets out to explore how the ultra-nationalist landscape of Russian WarTok and the tactics of pro-Ukrainian hijacking intertwine in a complex ecology of imitation and attention hijacking. THE SOUND OF DISINFORMATION: TIKTOK, COMPUTATIONAL PROPAGANDA AND THE INVASION OF UKRAINE Tom Divon and Marcus Bösch “ДОБРОГО ВЕЧОРА WHERE ARE YOU FROM”: MEMETIC REVERSAL, CULTURAL APPROPRIATION, AND SOUND HIJACKING Daria Delavar-Kasmai AMBIENT PROPAGANDA: THE DARK REFRAIN OF WARTOK Marc Tuters and Boris Noordenbos WHAT IF THEY ATTACK? КАТЮША AND THE COUNTERMOBILIZATION OF SOUND ON WARTOK Elena Pilipets and Marloes Geboers AMBIGUOUS STANCE-TAKING AND OPPOSITIONAL SOUND PUBLICS ON DOUYIN DURING THE RUSSIA-UKRAINE WAR Richard Rogers and Xiaoke Zhang Elena PilipetsMarloes GeboersTom DivonMarcus BöschDariia Delavar-KasmaiMarc TutersBoris NoordenbosRichard RogersXiaoke Zhang
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13532STITCHING POLITICS AND IDENTITY ON TIKTOK
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13530
Though a relative newcomer among social media platforms, social video-sharing platform TikTok is one of the largest social media platforms in the world, boasting over one billion monthly active users, which it garnered in just five years (Dellatto, 2021). While much of the early attention to the platform focused on more frivolous elements, such as its dances and challenges, the political weight of TikTok has become ever clearer. In the 2020 US election, Donald Trump’s plan to fill the 19,000-seat BOK Center in Tulsa was stymied by young activists who reserved tickets with no intention of attending, organized largely on TikTok (Bandy & Diakopoulos, 2020). In the years since, political discourse on TikTok has continued to emerge from everyday users and political campaigns alike (see Newman, 2022), even as TikTok itself has become an object of political contention: calls for banning the app in the United States–citing security concerns influenced by xenophobia, given the app’s Chinese ownership–began in the Trump presidency (Allyn, 2020) and have recently culminated in state- and federal-level bans on the app for government-owned devices in the U.S. (Berman, 2023). While some studies have navigated limited data access and the platform’s relative infancy to offer an examination of political TikTok (see Literat & Kligler-Vilenchik, 2019; Medina Serrano et al., 2020; Vijay & Gekker, 2021; Guinaudeau et al., 2022), there remains a significant need for more analysis and theorization of how TikTok can become both a site for political discourse and a feature caught up within political mobilization. This panel seeks to bring together emerging work that deals with political participation on TikTok, in order to share current wisdom and forge future research directions. The presented works specifically focus on the relationship between political participation on TikTok and political identity for three primary reasons. First, as a video-based and thus embodied platform (Raun, 2012), creator identity is more prominent and easily perceptible in the visual and auditory elements of TikTok videos than in the primarily text-based posts on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Second, TikTok relies more heavily on its recommendation algorithm for content distribution than its competitors traditionally have (Kaye et al., 2022; Cotter et al., 2022; Zeng & Kaye, 2022; Zhang & Liu, 2021), leading to the creation of “refracted publics” (Abidin, 2021) or Gemeinschaft-style communities (Kaye et al., 2022) around users’ common interests, which may include and/or be heavily informed by identity. Third, TikTok has long prioritized and found success with Generation Z and younger users more broadly (Zeng et al., 2021; Vogels et al., 2022; Stahl & Literat, 2022), which has made generational identity extremely salient on the app, while also implicating political identity, as young people tend to hold political beliefs more cognizant and accepting of diverse identities than older generations (Parker et al., 2019). The papers in this panel consider a wide range of identity characteristics of TikTok users and how these identities shape and are shaped by political discourse on TikTok. Paper 1 builds on TikTok’s targeting of Gen Z, considering the identities of age and generation through a content analysis of political remix on TikTok to uncover how younger users use TikTok for political activism as compared to their older counterparts, and finding evidence that TikTok is a powerful site of collective action. Also building from TikTok’s appeal to GenZ, Paper 2 presents a digital ethnographic analysis of the Trad-Wife phenomena on TikTok, offering that TikTok quietly (and thus insidiously) offers space for the cultivation of Christian Nationalist, ‘gentle fascisms’ within GenZ women, often without mention of ‘politics’ at all. Paper 3 offers a computational content analysis of political posts on TikTok with a focus on the interactions between identity and partisanship, and particularly the ways in which creators of marginalized identities on the right act as identity entrepreneurs, offering conservative critiques of their identity groups in ways which find popularity among conservative audiences of hegemonic identities. Finally, Paper 4 looks at differences in how TikTok users respond to male and female politicians’ TikTok videos using a combination of computational and qualitative methods, with exploratory analysis suggesting that male politicians receive more neutral and positive comments than female politicians. By focusing on identity and political discourse on TikTok, we recognize the wide range of political activity occurring on a platform often denigrated as frivolous, and foreground the importance of identity characteristics to the technological and social shaping of these dialogues. Parker BachAdina GitomerMelody DevriesChristina WalkerDeen FreelonJulia Atienza-BarthelemyBrooke Foucault WellesDiana DeyoeDiana Zulli
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13530MISOGYNY, SURVIVORSHIP, AND BELIEVABILITY ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS: EMERGING TECHNIQUES OF ABUSE, RADICALIZATION, AND RESISTANCE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13528
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. Sarah Banet-WeiserKathryn Claire HigginsNelanthi HewaDebbie GingCatherine BakerMaja Brandt AndreasenAzsaneé Truss
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13528IF NOT, ELSE: STANDARDS, PROTOCOLS, NETWORKS AND HOW THEY MAKE A DIFFERENCE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13525
The contemporary Internet's "network of networks" has become infrastructural to our lives. The Internet is a stack of physical, data link, network, transport, and application layers which all have unique rules and roles. While many see Internet infrastructure as a foregone conclusion, Paris, Cath and Myers West (2023) write “Internet infrastructure is built slowly, over time, protocol by protocol, in response to many different technical, social, political, environmental, and economic imperatives”. Even as the particular model of the Internet we are all accustomed to has become the standard, other attempts proliferated and eventually failed, as did the Soviet Internet (Peters 2016), and as this panel highlights, the Internet is still ever-evolving. The project of this panel is to trace alternative, parallel, and emergent network models, standards and protocols, theorize their impact as they appear in different places, spaces, and contexts, and gesture towards how the Internet might be different. As critical internet studies have since the early 2000s shown, computational standards, protocols, and network diagrams are more than technical details, they have the power to shape and structure the conditions for our socio-cultural lifeworlds (Galloway 2006; Chun 2008; Bratton 2016). As Gehl (2014) puts it: “interfaces, database structures, mechanisms of connection all shape social activities”. Change an element in the stack and a different connectivity, a different future becomes possible. The papers of this panel introduce and discuss five different and potentially revolutionary network technologies that manage and organize our online lives. The first paper represents a media genealogy of ActivityPub – a protocol that enables the Fediverse, a collection of social media sites that can communicate with one another. The author argues that ActivityPub was not produced through an instrumental process, but was the result of accidents and coincidences. The accidental nature of the protocol, coupled with its being authored by self-identified queer and trans developers, has put it on a collision course with both the “standard” approach to standards production as well as mainstream, corporate social media. The second paper focuses on the design of the Interplanetary Internet and the idea of delay-tolerant networking fundamental to operating in outer space. The author maintains that when delays are central to a network model, we are forced to rethink how our connections are maintained and organized in the future. Delay-tolerant networking is thus not only a technical solution for a communications system but a control protocol through which interplanetary life can be managed. The third paper is also focused on the temporality of networks. The third paper examines how time is enacted as a design ideology in the course of the development of a future internet architecture protocol project: named data networking (NDN). This work locates aspects of the sociomateriality of time in the processes of building Internet infrastructure and demonstrates how it binds together cultural, economic, and discursive power. The paper argues that thinking through time as a design ideology can be useful in projects imagining how the Internet might be built to engender and support different values than market ideology. The fourth paper is about the organizational culture of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a key internet standards and protocol organization. The paper argues that the organization is guided by a culturally inflected anti-political engineering ethos, whose depoliticizing tendencies hampers the organization’s functioning and its ability to rise above narrow industry-interest and pursue a public interest internet. The fifth paper looks to the Crypto Wars of the 1990s as a moment where things could have been otherwise; comparing the examples of PGP and RSA encryption software and how they shaped the nature of our networked systems. It argues that a combination of regulatory and commercial interests influenced the development and use of cryptography in ways that facilitated the development of e-commerce, but left private messaging in dubious legal status. Collectively the papers investigate alternative and emergent trends behind the Internet and its network models, standards, and protocols. The protocols and rules for network connection, standards bodies, and modes of governance are critical to maintaining and upkeeping a network. Their impact, however, is not merely technical but potentially world-changing. The papers direct their critical gaze towards the development of these technologies and what their introduction to our world potentially entails. By focusing on projects of past, present, and future and by exploring the Internet’s deepest sociotechnical layers, the panel critically dismantles the commonly-held idea that the Internet is a monolith and illustrates that the history of the Internet is still being written. Tero KarppiBritt ParisRobert W. GehlCorinne CathSarah Myers West
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13525REPARATIVE MEDIA: REVOLUTIONARY STORYTELLING AND ITS ENEMIES IN A STREAMING ERA
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13523
How do we challenge a streaming “golden age” characterized by the ceaseless production of expression that repeats and reinforces injustice and inequality? Our media and tech systems prioritize developing stories and platforms to target distinct audiences for profit, but our communities need to cultivate interdependence and solidarity. Healing these injustices, including racism, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, classism, ableism, and other forms of hate, requires a specific method of repair: re-distributing power more equitably to the historically disempowered. In the last decade in the U.S., what Aymar Jean Christian terms “reparative media,” responding to the social upheaval that political polarization, misinformation, and climate and racial reckoning has burgeoned. Christian writes, “[R]epairing our culture means healing how we make media, how we connect through technology, and how we generate knowledge.” This panel analyzes the concept of reparative media, examines case studies, and analyzes counterrevolutionary pushback. Grounded in U.S. experience, the panel is designed to open a conversation more widely, and create terms under which these issues can be engaged elsewhere. Unlike previous eras, this era’s reparative media work is grounded in responses to the realities of a digital culture shaped by mega-platforms and instant reaction times. In audio-visual media, streamers (building upon past example in broadcast and cable) have funded or showcased extractive and exploitative programming, such as much of true crime, reality shows, and unapologetically offensive comedy. Scandals about ethics—Yazidi women protesting invasion of privacy in the documentary Sabaya, MENASA filmmakers protesting errors and putting participants at risk in Jihad Rehab, BIPOC filmmakers protesting the all-white, male production crew for a forthcoming film about BIPOC sports star Tiger Woods--have multiplied. The reparative media movement is also informed, in the U.S., by the tide of racial reckoning since 2014. This movement has also been joined by other minoritized voices, including those of people living with disabilities, gender-nonconforming makers, and those experiencing consequences of lacking appropriate immigration status. However, the reparative work also builds upon efforts in previous eras in self-styled movements for alternative media, community media, public-service media, and activist media. These movements were accompanied by extensive communications research—much of it done in a collaborative way with practitioners—that allows us to understand today’s reparative media in context. These movements have shared common expectations that media produced by and for underheard members of society are essential parts of movements for social change. The panel provides both theoretical and practice-oriented roads into the discussion, which we expect to be between a third and a half of the time allotted. Panelists also strive to provide examples and illustrations relevant to the conference venue of Philadelphia. The first speaker will address the concepts of reparative media and reparative research and development. Reparative research is work that is not only about but with reparative media communities, using both quantitative and qualitative research. Reparative story development is about the practice of developing narratives that confront, challenge, and provide alternatives to systemically oppressive storytelling. Reparative platform development is the work of building training, distribution and showcasing alternatives to today’s digital mega-platforms. This presentation will use case studies to illustrate the three categories. The second speaker will use a cultural-production analysis to focus upon reparative story development practices, looking closely at a two-year process to create standards for values-driven documentary production, a process triggered in part by alarm at streamer fecklessness. The process, which itself included reparative research, is analyzed for its challenges as well as its conclusions. Reception within the documentary community of the resulting document, a values-based framework for a six-part production process, is discussed, as is engagement by gatekeepers such as streamers, broadcasters and production companies. The presentation then focuses on attacks, benefiting from a veneer of legitimacy from centrist mainstream media, that leverage a conservative activists’ invocation on of “woke cancel culture,” to demonize the assertion of such values. The third speaker will address reparative platform development. In the U.S., community media centers, based in cable systems and offering educational, governmental, and public access channels, have their origins in 1970s citizen activism. But CMCs have shown an ability not only to survive but to reinvent themselves both technologically and in terms of community reparative work. The paper focuses on one such example, in Philadelphia, where communities of color have been actively working to address systemic harms and bolster community strength with hyperlocal media. In discussing the work of creating content for such systems, the paper also reveals the infrastructural affordances and limitations mediamakers encounter. Such forces reveal the systemic forces that threaten the evolution of such media. The discussant, with deep experience in reparative research in the Philadelphia media community and nationally, will infuse their commentary with location-specific references. Finally, panelists will provide in closing a brief, slideshow mini-tour of Philadelphia sites of reparative media work. Aymar J ChristianPatricia A AufderheideAntoine HaywoodJessica Clark
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13523INFRASTRUCTURES OF MANIPULATION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13539
This panel presents research on web and information infrastructures used for manipulative purposes. In contrast to platform manipulation (Woolley & Howard, 2018; Benkler et al., 2018), where users such as bad actors seek to gamify and exploit the weaknesses of online social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok, the papers in the present panel describe studies where web or information infrastructures such as those involved in search and information retrieval are manipulated to alter or produce facts (rather than social commentary on facts). For example, studies have shown how infrastructures like Google Search are manipulated by conservative elites (Tripodi, 2022), how anonymous editors use Wikidata to revise the distribution of information related to political protest movements (Ford, 2022), and how administrators harness information schemas to improve the findability of their advertising content (Iliadis, 2022). In these areas and more, web and digital infrastructures are being manipulated to serve the interests of politically motivated actors (Acker, 2018; Acker & Donovan, 2019). Infrastructures typically refer to shared public services like sewers, telephone poles, and electricity. According to Bowker et al. (2010, p. 98), information infrastructure refers to “digital facilities and services usually associated with the internet.” Information infrastructures are thus enabling resources, in network form, whose key role is that of a distributor, but rather than goods or services, information infrastructures distribute “knowledge, culture, and practice” (Bowker et al., 2010, p. 114). Such structures do this through their development of ontologies or classification schemes that enable dividing the world into categories or, through their application to large data sets, by offering an enormous, open store of data that can be used by others for a variety of purposes, such as retrieving facts and sharing information. Recently, several scholars have elaborated on the political nature of such infrastructural processes of digitization and datafication, including in the domains of archiving and preservation (Thylstrup, 2018, 2022), governance and management (Flyverbom & Murray, 2018), metrics and sorting (Alaimo & Kallinikos, 2021), and the creation of global ontologies for things like web search (Iliadis et al., 2023) and surveillance services (Iliadis & Acker, 2022). Manipulation of social media content and messaging is likewise a major research area over the last several years owing to the prevalence of online misinformation and disinformation campaigns (Reagle, 2016; Paris, 2021; Culloty & Suiter, 2021), particularly those associated with electoral politics (Tucker & Persily, 2020) and health misinformation (Keselman et al., 2022). Yet, online manipulation is not a new phenomenon and has long been discussed as a feature of the web in the context of the history of trolling, abuse, and hate (Phillips, 2015, 2019). Manipulation is thus a multivalent concept and is found in several domains which share the notion that manipulation is related to the altering, editing, treating, controlling, and influencing of content and messages for the purpose of misleading individuals. Historically, though, less attention has focused on manipulation as it has been mobilized infrastructurally, particularly with respect to the information infrastructures that transmit content and messages. Infrastructures should be understood here in a broad sense as undergirding the communication structures that transmit messages and content. Such infrastructures can be found in computer science, news and journalism, government, policy, and other areas where messaging is organized using some form of schema, whether it be technical, linguistic, financial, or otherwise. The first paper uses interviews to highlight the “importance of abortion-related web search and whether or not that system has been manipulated by actors trying to prevent abortion access.” The paper “examines how people (users) search for information about abortion, how organizations (content providers) utilize search engine optimization to reach potential users, and how advertisers try to attract visitors.” The second paper uses autoethnography and process tracing with respect to “the AP African American Studies debacle in order to elucidate digitally mediated disinformation as a strategy for stoking moral panic and thereby gaining widespread public buy-in to the establishment of educational censorship infrastructure.” The third paper analyzes Palantir as a surveillance platform that shapes and is shaped by infrastructures of manipulation. The paper “provides a method for researching companies like Palantir and its surveillance infrastructures” through digital media archiving of “over 600+ documents which have been stored, cleaned, annotated, and uploaded into an online digital archive that will be publicly available for media researchers to study.” The fourth and final paper is “an ethnographic study of a single Wikipedia article and how it evolved over the course of a decade” in the context of political revolutons. The paper describes “a framework for understanding new methods of controlling facts in the context of automated knowledge products” and “the importance of semantic infrastructure to new methods of control and influence on Wikipedia and the wider knowledge infrastructures that are increasingly dependent on it.” Andrew IliadisFrancesca TripodiAashka DaveLeslie Kay JonesAmelia AckerHeather Ford
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13539DISPATCHES FROM THE EARLY INTERNET: HISTORIES, IMAGINARIES, AND ARCHAEOLOGIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13537
This panel charts disparate histories of early internet formations: building from and contributing to the growing body of work which operates across technical interfaces, infrastructures, and cultures of use to paint a more complete picture of how internet and computing cultures, as we now know them, came to be. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, these accounts work against hegemonic, top-down, “revolutionary” narratives of historical internet cultural and infrastructural development. Rather than revolutionary, this collection of papers views the development of new media as a sort of continual updating of technological norms through existing neoliberal logics. In case studies ranging from transgender identity to furry infrastructure, from German leftism to Canadian youth culture – this research offers new interventions, drawing from across geographies and temporalities and further problematizing the popular framing of any singular “internet.” Alexander RudenshioldAvery Dame-GriffLiam MacLeanKatie MacKinnon
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13537WEB HISTORIES IN THE MAKING: WEB ARCHIVES & THE LOGICS OF PRACTICE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13535
Historically-situated accounts of the Web have a long history within the field of internet studies. Drawing on diverse methodologies and forms of data, web histories of platforms, cultures and communities of practice have illuminated the rich, but often transient and shifting nature of life online. Many web histories rely upon researchers capturing, collecting, and generating their own data through time, though some have also engaged with web archives as a means for studying the past online. However, web archive data have never fulfilled the requirements of positivist ideals such as ‘representativeness’ or objectivity, and the methodological consequences of this observation currently do not go far enough. This panel aims to shift and reframe current discussions of the ‘promise’ of web archives for web historiography, towards identifying what underlying logics or ideals drive and motivate various actors engaged in this work. We argue that not only do the logics underpinning the practices of collecting and archiving the Web deserve further attention, but also the practices of internet researchers who aim to use these materials for studying the Web. Each paper contribution in this panel builds on web archive criticism by situating archived web material as fundamentally tied to the logics of practice. These underpinnings affect not only the formation of web archives, but also the methodological approaches researchers take. We therefore suggest new ways for conceptualising the ‘doing’ of web histories, tying them to an assemblage of people, practice and data that shape how we can come to understand the Web. Johannes PaßmannLisa GerzenMartina SchoriesJessica OgdenEmily MaemuraKatherine MacKinnon
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13535IDEOLOGY AND AFFECT IN POLITICAL POLARIZATION AND FANDOM ONLINE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13533
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. Sebastian SvegaardRenee BarnesEloy VieiraMaria Clara AquinoDriele FerreiraBeatriz BlancoAdriana AmaralCassia SchuchKyle MoodyAllegra RosenbergSamantha Vilkins
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13533GENDER AND MISINFORMATION: DIGITAL HATE AND HARASSMENT (PART II)
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13531
Social media platforms allow for free expression and speech, but also open possibilities for online misinformation, disinformation, propaganda, harm, and conspiracy theories (Nadim and Fladmoe, 2019). Here, gender as an analytical category plays a significant role in understanding how women, LGBTQ+ people, and members of various minorities, in particular, are disproportionately targeted by hate actors. In fact, through gendered violence and online hate, social media serves to promote structural inequality where gender minorities become the target of harassment (Jane 2014a; Jane 2017). Gendered violence and cyberhate have consequences that negatively impact women and queer groups and pose a threat to political goals through victimization and reinforcement of patriarchy (Jane, 2014b). Though anonymous in nature, mobilized and networked hate becomes a product of what Castells (1986) refers to as the culture of real virtuality where is a flow of capital, information, technology, images as well as organizational interaction. In particular, gendered cyberhate targets women in longstanding discourses that view men as superior to women (Jane, 2014b). Misogyny exists as a connective tissue that legitimizes the subjugation of feminine and othered identities in relation to heteronormative patriarchy (Kaul, 2021). In particular, online violence against women in politics poses a deepening challenge to democracy, serving as a key tool of illiberalism and democratic backsliding across the globe. Hate speech against women in politics, female journalists and other public figures encompasses all forms of aggression, coercion, and intimidation seeking to exclude women from the digital public sphere simply because they are women. Gender misinformation here itself becomes a form of violence that undermines women and othered identities and weaponizes gendered narratives to promote political, social, or economic objectives. This online behavior seeks to achieve political outcomes: targeting individual women to harm them or drive them out of public life, while also sending a message that women in general should not be involved in politics. It is important to note that digital misogyny may not be overt at all times but benign and subtle - involving “everyday, seemingly innocent slights, comments, overgeneralizations, othering, and denigration of marginalized groups” (Anderson, 2010; Anderson, 2015) that although unintentional is insidious and dangerous. Despite growing concerns about the increasing prevalence of misogynistic or sexist hate speech on different popular digital platforms, research in this field and the attention directed at ways to combat hate online is relatively recent. At this juncture, this panel on Gender Misinformation: Hate and Harassment will provide a forum to discuss how women in politics, journalism, and the film industry are perceived, and what the hate that targets these women looks like in practice in a global context. We bring together scholars whose interdisciplinary and comparative work in Germany, Azerbaijan, the Philippines, India, and Brazil focuses on prominent women in the digital public sphere and political leaders from racial, ethnic, religious, or other minority groups to demonstrate how misogynistic speech acts to exacerbate patriarchal norms and operationalize a relationship between gender and power. In addition to the focus on digital hate and harassment in the Global South, this panel also brings together a diversity of methodological interventions References Anderson Kristin J. (2015). Modern Misogyny: Anti-Feminism in a Post-Feminist Era. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Anderson Kristin J. (2010). Benign Bigotry: The Psychology of Subtle Prejudice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Castells, Manuel. (2000). The rise of the network society. Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers Jane Emma A. (2017). Misogyny Online: A Short (and Brutish) History. London: Sage. Kaul, Nitasha. (2021). The Misogyny of Authoritarians in Contemporary Democracies, International Studies Review, Volume 23, Issue 4, Pages 1619–1645, https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viab028. Nadim, M., & Fladmoe, A. (2019). Silencing Women? Gender and Online Harassment. Social Science Computer Review, 39, 245 - 258. Narayanamoorthy NandithaMarie HermanovaRosella RegaJennifer HenrichsenSheila Babulal LalwaniMarília Gehrke
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13531TOWARD A REVOLUTION IN AUSTRALIAN CHILDREN’S DATA AND PRIVACY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13529
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.Tama LeaverKate MannellAnna BunnGavin DuffyRebecca NgAndy Zhao
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13529REVISITING KEY CONCEPTS IN DIGITAL MEDIA RESEARCH: INFLUENCE, POPULISM, PARTISANSHIP, POLARISATION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13527
Recent scholarship on the intersections between digital media and political debate has taken on a decidedly pessimistic, even dystopian tone, and not without reason: from the effective use of social media platforms by populists and demagogues like Donald Trump to the expression of deepening ideological divides in online public debate, and from the emergence of partisan online communities and platforms to the intensification and exploitation of such partisanship by conspiracy theorists and state actors, there are substantial concerns about the way that extremist actors are utilising digital and social media logics to further their ideological agendas. The situation is further complicated by platform providers’ and regulators’ limited and unsystematic responses to these issues. But while there is considerable research into the various issues and events that illustrate these developments, many of the central concepts that are used to describe these cases receive substantially less critical attention. Terms such as ‘influence’, ‘populism’, ‘partisanship’, and ‘polarisation’ are often deployed as if did not themselves require further qualification and definition – even in spite of the considerable volume of literature in political science and other ancillary disciplines that addresses the various facets that such concepts may have. Informed by and building on substantial empirical research, this panel therefore facilitates a conversation between methodological innovation at the coalface of digital trace data analysis and careful reflection on the definitions of key concepts, in order to explore the conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches that might illuminate the distinct features of our four key concepts in sharper focus. Our first paper engages with the concept of influence, which it conceptualises as the power to affect others. Focussing especially on the spread of verified false content (VFC) through social media, it proposes a novel population-scale approach that both employs a bottom-up perspective for identifying the influential actors spreading such content, and highlights the exposure of ordinary citizens to these messages. It demonstrates this approach by drawing on the large-scale Facebook URL-sharing dataset available from Social Science One, developing an EU-wide perspective on VFC exposure at national levels. Our second paper continues this approach by critiquing the concept of populism, highlighting the term as a weak analytical concept. It argues that, rather than focussing on their populist stance, populist politicians can be judged by the extent of their delegitimising rhetoric. Further, the paper asserts that such rhetoric is enabled by the decentralised communication environment of social media. The utility of the concept of delegitimisation is that enables the identification of political messages that are truly dangerous because they are meant to destabilise fundamental democratic principles, such as the integrity of the vote and the legitimacy of alternative policy perspectives. By situating this in the context of social media messaging, we can see how such messages are amplified by distributed network channels. Our third paper shifts focus to the possible results of influence campaigns and populist demagoguery, and addresses the concept of partisanship. Taking as case study the 2022 Italian election, it introduces a novel combination of computationally informed analytical methods and applies them to social media data to gauge the level of partisan attention devoted to the different news sources and political topics in the election campaign, and distinguish between partisan and cross-partisan sources and themes. This provides new insights into the structures, intersections, and faultlines of partisanship, and enables the mapping of a broader multi-dimensional ideological space. Our final paper continues this discussion by exploring the complexities of polarisation. It highlights the conceptual fluidity of this term, which is expressed in the multitude of adjectives and qualifiers that can be found in the relevant literature – from ideological through affective to interactive polarisation and beyond, and from benign and even beneficial to pernicious and destructive polarisation. Mapping these distinct forms of polarisation onto a diverse range of mixed-methods digital media research approaches, and outlining a number of criteria for assessing whether the dynamics of polarisation have turned destructive, it outlines new pathways for polarisation research in Internet studies. In combination, then, these four papers offer a timely nudge for digital and social media research to revisit and reconsider some of the central concepts in online political communication studies, and to retrace and reaffirm the connections between the definitions of these concepts and the methodological frameworks that we use to study them. Axel BrunsAnja BechmannMarina Charquero-BallesterJessica G. WalterJennifer Stromer-GalleyBrian McKernanFabio GigliettoNicola RighettiAnna StanzianoTariq ChoucairKatharina EsauSebastian SvegaardSamantha Vilkins
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13527USING “SMALL DATA” TO MAP HOW MEN’S RIGHTS CAME ONLINE (WORK-IN-PROGRESS)
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13410
While the advent of the Internet can be seen as a “revolution” in how social movements communicate and organize, digital methods and materials do not necessarily constitute a “revolution” in how we study movements or their histories. My paper enters this discussion by suggesting a "small data" approach for studying the early digital presence of the men’s rights movement, and its transition from print to digital media. I compare two unique data sets involving print and digital archives to map out the geographical locations of men's rights groups and adherents in the early 1990s. I demonstrate how: 1) there is significant overlap between the print organizations and early digital spaces for men's rights activists; and 2) men’s rights communities in North America were often concentrated in areas like Southern California, the Pacific Northwest, and the North Eastern Seaboard. Ultimately, I argue that print materials, “small data,” and non-computational methods are still valuable tools to study social movements and their early digital histories. Alexis de Coning
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13410DEAR BABY GAYS: INVESTIGATING THE SOCIOTECHNICAL PRACTICES OF OLDER LGBTQ+ TIKTOK USERS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13415
Much scholarship and public discourse alike focus on TikTok’s widespread uptake by young people, including LGBTQ+ youth. However, LGBTQ+ people on the platform often experience challenges relating to visibility and censorship. As users of a variety of ages have joined TikTok’s youthful population, this paper explores the sociotechnical practices of older LGBTQ+ TikTok users as they emerge from, and are shaped by, the platform and its user cultures. It does so through an analysis of older LGBTQ+ TikTokers’ videos and metadata, gathered through novel methods for configuring research accounts to serve up this content to the For You page. Once the accounts were trained to deliver this content through TikTok’s personalized algorithmic curation, videos were collected for one hour per day over a duration of approximately 4 weeks for each account. Preliminary visual and textual analysis of videos indicates recurrent themes related to constructing identities that intersect age with sexual identity, giving advice, sharing about personal experiences and queer history, and circulating counter-discourses against homophobia and transphobia as well as messages of solidarity with targets of discrimination. Analysis of how these users negotiate TikTok’s affordances also indicates that platform’s features, policies, and dominant user practices permeate and shape older LGBTQ+ TikTokers’ self-representations, such that the platform and modes of paying attention to it have become a central element of their content. Stefanie DuguayÖzgem Elif AcarHannah Jamet-Lange
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13415THE INFRASTRUCTURAL POWER OF PROGRAMMATIC ADVERTISING NETWORKS: ANALYZING DISINFORMATION INDUSTRIES IN BRAZIL
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13413
The informational disorder that sprawls through multiple state-nations, exacerbated by violent uprisings and coup attempts such as the US Capitol Storm on January 6th, 2021 and the Brazilian coup attempt on January 8th, 2023, has shed new light on the political economy of disinformation industries. In particular, it brings to the forefront the problem of economic incentives for creating and spreading disinformation. This paper builds on critical platform and infrastructure research literature for analyzing the multilateral infrastructural power of programmatic advertising networks. Our research questions are: how is power exercised by programmatic advertising infrastructures while managing its multilateral relationships? In terms of technicities, governance and business models, how does these infrastructures enable or reinforce desinformation disorder? This case study draws on a multi-methodological approach, combining digital methods research and critical analysis of platform documents. The empirical data obtained has 95.269 ads collected on the website (data scraped with a Python script developed by one of the authors) during the election month. Empirical data show that MGID, a native advertising platform, placed 54% of the advertisements on Terra Brasil Notícias. Google Ads was the second largest provider of digital ads on TBN, despite its policy`s restrictions on sellers that host unreliable or harmful content on issues such as health, climate, elections and democracy. Findings from the Brazilian case also contribute to understanding the infrastructural power of big tech governing the monetization of publishers in the Global South. Marcelo Alves Dos Santos JRCarlos D'Andrea
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13413STABLE SCIENCE AND FICKLE BODIES: AN EXAMINATION OF TRUST AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF EXPERTISE ON R/SKINCAREADDICTION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13411
While there is considerable research on the topic of trust when it comes to health information or news media, there is less work examining how trust and expertise are conceptualized for information that straddles both subjective and objective approaches to knowledge. “Skincare”, as it is engaged with on the subreddit r/SkincareAddiction, exists in such a space, occupying a liminal positioning between formalized bioscience and experiential/aesthetic knowledge. Depending on where a member places skin care on this spectrum influences who they view as credible experts, and in turn what information that member deems trustworthy. Using an STS/Feminist STS theoretical framing, this paper investigates how members of the subreddit r/SkincareAddiction identify, evaluate, and perform skincare expertise. These expressions of expertise provide valuable insight into how members negotiate community norms, personal experience, and scientific studies to not only discern skincare knowledge, but also construct an understanding of their own skin. Cara Maria Carmel DeCusatis
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13411“THIS TWEET IS UNAVAILABLE”: #BLACKLIVESMATTER TWEETS DECAY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13414
Previous studies show that random tweet collections that include more than one hashtag had relatively low rate of unavailable tweets while political related datasets have a higher rate of tweet decay (Almuhimedi et al., 2013; Bastos, 2021; Bhattacharya & Ganguly, 2016; McCammon, 2022; Zubiaga, 2018). For example, Zubiaga’s (2018) study indicates that 81.4% of their 30 randomly selected real-world events datasets remained available after 4 years, while Bastos’ (2021) study shows that only 67% of Brexit debate related tweets were available after the same amount of time. Our preliminary study looks at the #BlackLivesMatter discussion on Twitter and we find that only 63% tweets remain available after 2 years, which is significantly higher compared to the previous studies. This preliminary work adds to the existing literature in two keyways. First, we broaden the kinds of discussion spaces where information decay has been studied by focusing on #BlackLivesMatter (hereafter, BLM), which in the U.S. has become a highly politicized movement (Stewart et al., 2018). Second, to our best knowledge, this is the first study looking at social movement tweets since Musk took over and it may highlight how the landscape on Twitter has shifted. Yiran DuanJeff HemsleyAlexander O. Smith
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13414#VLADDYDADDY ON TIKTOK: IMAGINED INTIMACY AND MEMETIC PARTICIPATION IN TIMES OF WAR
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13412
#Vladdydaddy is a popular internet meme that emerged during the 2016 elections in the United States on 4chan and Twitter to characterize the perceived submissive behavior of Donald Trump towards Vladimir Putin. The meme re-emerged on TikTok in the days leading to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, gaining a new meaning. This paper is part of a larger research project with the objective of identifying and scrutinizing various forms of social media memetic participation in response to human tragedies, such as the Russia-Ukraine war. In this paper we focus on "DM memes" as a creative sub-meme of #Vladdydaddy. Drawing from theories of memetic participation (Milner, 2016) and imagined intimacy (Greenwood & Long, 2011) for the analysis. The findings suggest that the DMing Putin meme emerges as a collective coping mechanism to fulfill an emotional need through the construction of imagined intimacy. The strict censorship laws within Russian borders underscores the significance of exploring seemingly trivial online discursive practices as courageous in a political context that can carry grave consequences offline. In doing so, we bring to the forefront the global community of creators who take a firm stance towards the current political climate in Russia. Tom DivonDaniela Jaramillo-DentAlex Gekker
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13412IDENTIFYING WITH PRIVACY: REFERENCES TO PRIVACY IN DEVELOPERS’ GITHUB PROFILES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13443
The proposed presentation explores the ways in which developers use the notion of privacy in their GitHub biographies. Initially a code-sharing platform, GitHub has become in recent years a major recruitment site. In that environment, a valuable potential worker is one who knows how to extract and make the most of users’ personal information. At the same time, in an open source platform, “privacy” maintains its romantic allure as a worthwhile endeavor. How do developers manage this tension? And what may its negotiation imply for the production of privacy? Analyzing the 2025 GitHub bios in which developers use the word “privacy,” we explore two articulations of privacy in developers’ self-presentation: privacy as a profession, and privacy as a passion. Keren Levi-EshkolRivka Ribak
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13443ALGORITHMIC FOLK THEORIES OF ONLINE HARASSMENT: HOW SOCIAL MEDIA ALGORITHMS ENABLE ONLINE HARASSMENT AND PREVENT INTERVENTION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13441
Online harassment is a public health concern, and social media algorithms are often proposed as a solution by social media companies. As online harassment grows, there are concerns that algorithms as content moderators fail to achieve their desired effect because of inabilities to contextualize social issues. This research contributes to the intersection of algorithms and online harassment by investigating the algorithmic folk theories of the victims, perpetrators, and bystanders of online harassment. Strategically sampling the experiences of marginalized identity categories who experienced harassment, we conducted grounded theory interviews and found that people theorize that algorithmic failures fuel online harassment and isolate victims. We describe four folk theories that victims, perpetrators, and witnesses utilize to make sense of their experiences of online harassment. The $2 asserts algorithms only pay attention to harassment incidents with a large number of flags. $2 describes perceptions of how algorithms amplify harassment content to increase engagement. $2 refers to perceptions that algorithms seek to form new audiences for content, which networks harassers together. $2 finds victims perceive that algorithms fail to contextualize the harassment of marginalized communities. Victims, bystanders, and perpetrators each described using their folk theories to instigate, push back, or succumb to the culture of online harassment. Understanding these algorithmic online harassment folk theories highlights how social media algorithms perpetuate harassment and fail to support victims. $2 : algorithmic folk theories, online harassment, networked harassment, social media, content moderation. Cait LackeySamuel Hardman Taylor
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13441‘NOT LIKE OTHER SOCIAL NETWORKS’? BEREAL AND THE REMEDIATION OF LIVENESS IN THE PLATFORM ENVIRONMENT
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13452
‘Social media’ represent a dynamic technological environment, in which emerging platforms make use of comparisons to existing apps to construct their own reputation. This is the case of BeReal – a platform that allows users to share pictures once a day, and only when triggered by a notification. In this paper, I combine digital technography and the platform walkthrough method to examine how BeReal deploys antagonistic discourse towards dominant media to promise a more authentic experience. In so doing, I frame the platform as evoking, appropriating, and remediating (Bolter and Grusin 2000) notions of mediated liveness – not only when it comes to a promised ‘real-time’ connection but also referring to particular ways of ‘being there’, sharing experiences, and having ‘real’ experiences through technological mediation. This discussion matters because it demonstrates how claims of immediacy and of a direct access to ‘reality’ are manifested and negotiated in contemporary sociotechnical practices. In this context, BeReal’s version for “platformized authenticity” – the co-option of ‘the authentic’ to advance platforms’ growth and commercial goals – is a process marked by a recursive, cyclical negotiation between technical mediation and claims of liveness. Ludmila Lupinacci
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13452BEHOLD THE METAVERSE: FACEBOOK’S META REVOLUTION AND THE CIRCULATION OF ELITE DISCOURSE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13450
Despite pushback from regulatory and non-governmental entities, Meta’s control over the public narrative remains consistent. Using a method of corpus analysis, this paper investigated the company’s sociotechnical imaginary as it circulates in media artifacts (n=428) responding to Zuckerberg’s 2021 Metaverse announcement. Analysis of how these artifacts respond to issues related to identity, privacy, security, and connectivity revealed that the majority amplify Meta’s corporate messaging, empowering its elite discourse and solidifying its social power. While certain artifacts attempt to confront the prevailing narrative related to privacy, such discourse is often ineffectively rooted in cyber-libertarian ideology. In order to more effectively challenge Meta’s social power, future critical discourse should be 1) more holistically deployed and 2) cognizant of the logics of surveillance capitalism and user exploitation. Ultimately, this paper considers the rhetorical strategies and functions deployed in the circulation of elite discourse, while also acknowledging the dynamism of sociotechnical imaginaries. Brent LuciaMatthew VetterIsaac Adubofour
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13450CIVIC PARTICIPATION IN CHINA: A COMPARATIVE STUDY BETWEEN WECHAT AND DOUYIN AS A DEMOCRATIC ARENA
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13448
Online media platforms have become an arena for activists to engage with political discourses. Since COVID-19, an increasing number of citizens have begun to actively participate online to express their ideas towards political issues. Various types of user-generated content were circulated on various social media platforms: they wrote textual content on Wechat with various metaphors and created user-generated videos on video-streaming platforms to express their opinions. In this context, this study examines how citizens express democratic opinions against ideological discourse, what role social media platforms play as an arena for activists’ participation, and what social media factors facilitate active online civic participation. Adopting a cross-platform perspective, this study compares how Douyin and Wechat facilitate civic participation differently and how people engage with political content differently on these two different media platforms. I employed digital ethnography, augmented by the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018), and qualitative content analysis to examine how WeChat and Douyin play different roles in civic participation. This study argues that the social networking platform WeChat provides more in-depth participation and has more resistant forms than Douyin, especially for expressing counter-ideas to mainstream discourses. Among the various forms of resistance, sharing WeChat articles is one of the most visible and effective ways to express democratic opinions in mainstream discourse. Hui Lin
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13448ARTIFICIAL LOVE: REVOLUTIONS IN HOW AI AND AR EMBODIED ROMANTIC CHATBOTS CAN MOVE THROUGH RELATIONSHIP STAGES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13446
Depictions of romantic relationships between humans and computers/robots/AI systems are a common trope in science fiction. With recent advances in AI conversational chatbots and augmented reality avatars, applications such as Replika have started to enable everyday people to engage in romantic relationships with AI chatbots and talk to visual representations of their AI partners. While there has been a growing body of work exploring the motivations, practices, and benefits/risks of these conversational chatbots, the romantic side of things has been relatively underexplored. While much of the work has been about the why and the overall purpose of the romantic relationship, there has been less work that examines these from a relational stage perspective, and how these systems move in and across different relationship stages of development. This is especially important because communication scholars have long theorized that Romantic Relationships fall into a unique category of relationships, such that there are more discrete stages of coming together/apart, more risk/vulnerability in these relationships, and a wider range of interactions/negotiations over identity and interdependence. Through in-depth interviews with people who participate in an online forum ILoveMyReplika, this study aims to explore how people engage with the system romantically, how these systems craft messages that are indicative of different stages of relationships, and how people handle the movement and change across time with these systems. This piece will have important implications for our understanding of human machine relationships and human relationship stages generally, as well as implications for the design of social computing agents. Tony LiaoDebriunna PorterElizabeth Rodwell
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13446WOMEN REVOLUTIONISING MONEY?: INVESTIGATING MEANING-MAKING AND GENDER MESSAGING IN FEMALE-TO-FEMALE FINFLUENCING ON INSTAGRAM
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13444
Women were excluded from financial independence historically, causing a significant gender gap in financial literacy. Financial decision-making was based on households where women were deprived of contribution, as they were not allowed to act as the main account holder and were seen as dependents in the formal financial system. However, informal communities were formed, sharing intimate knowledge in alternative ways of personal finance. In the online Web 2.0 environments, social media platforms, namely Instagram, could serve as new forms of learning environments for financial literacy through informal peer-to-peer learning and therefore become a virtual extension of existing 'saving communities' in real life. The paper highlights the existence of a small but thriving personal finance community on Instagram and provides evidence of the volume of content related to personal finance, debt, and saving money on the platform. The emergence of female financial influencers created a sense of virtual togetherness where women felt safe to seek peer support and share personal stories. This paper proposes four-phase research using netnographic immersion journals (Kozinets, 2022), an online survey, and semi-structured interviews and will present the early findings from data collection beginning in March 2023. It proposes a networked perspective addressing technical, social, and cultural components (Selbst et al., 2019) in relation to the formation, expansion, and evolution of female financial influencing on Instagram. This study responds to the wider conference themes of revolutions by examining social barriers to seeking financial support at the intersection of feminist studies, the digital divide, and financial literacy. Yuening LiLisa Garwood-CrossAphra Kerr
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13444CARE-LESS DATA POP CULTURES: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE DATA IMAGINARIES AND DATA CULTURES OF THE PANDEMIC
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13442
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, many studies have critiqued the care-less legal and technical aspects of governments’ data disclosure of COVID-19 patients’ information. Yet, while there were many reported cases of public shaming of COVID-19 patients, not many studies have examined citizens’ usage and engagement with publicized data. In our study, we direct attention to citizens’ care-less engagement with COVID-19 patients’ data through the case study of the “Itaewon outbreak.” In May 2020, the gay community in South Korea became the target of public surveillance after it was revealed that a person who tested positive had visited a gay club in Seoul’s multicultural district Itaewon. Using the anonymized demographic and location data disclosed by the government, the news media sensationally reported on the data by highlighting the visitors’ presumed gay sexuality. In response, citizens widely circulated the data across social media by drawing on social media's popular culture of surveillance and call-outs. We describe these processes of interpreting and shaping pandemic data through social media’s participatory culture as data pop culture. To analyze data pop culture, we first examine the dominant data imaginaries cultivated through news media and government reports on pandemic data disclosure and how they inform the public’s understanding of data. Then, we examine how these dominant data imaginaries create power relations between people on social media as data owners and data objects. Lastly, we illustrate how these data imaginaries and relations become reproduced through social media popular culture and their implications. Jeehyun Jenny LeeJin Lee
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13442“GETTING PAID TO TAKE CARE FOR THE ONES YOU LOVE”: SOCIAL MEDIA INFLUENCING AS A MEANS FOR PAID SOCIAL REPRODUCTION LABOR
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13451
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. Tinca LukanJožica Čehovih Zajc
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13451CLIMATE ANXIETY AS A LENS INTO YOUNG PEOPLE'S POLITICAL EXPRESSION ON YOUTUBE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13449
Climate anxiety—the feeling of dread and distress associated with worrying about the future of the planet—has been posited as a defining feature of Gen Z. This study examines youth communication around climate anxiety on YouTube, through a qualitative content analysis of 146 youth-created videos about climate anxiety, as well as the over 20,000 comments posted on them. Illustrating an emphasis on content rather than form, the videos in our corpus showed an in-depth engagement with the topic at hand, coupled with a simple, low-key aesthetic. The vast majority of videos assumed an imagined audience of young people who are concerned about the climate; thus, the goal was to provide information and advice rather than persuade about climate change. Our analysis illustrates the significance of insider conversations among youth, and the centrality of YouTube’s expressivity and connectivity affordances in allowing young people to engage with these topics on a personal and intimate level. At the same time, our research illuminates the mental toll of political expression for young people, and further highlights this connection between the affective and the political drive. On a theoretical level, our research offers and tests a broadly applicable model that explains how different social media platforms (in this case, YouTube) enable—as well as constrain—certain forms of political expression, through the interaction between their affordances, norms, and contents. Ioana LiteratNeta Kligler-Vilenchik
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13449COMMEMORATING AS CRITICIZING: HOW LI WENLIANG’S WEIBO HOMEPAGE BECOMES A PLACE FOR QUESTIONING CHINA’S COVID-19 POLICIES AND A “WAILING WALL”
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13447
Li Wenliang, an eye doctor at Wuhan Central hospital and one of the first to raise alarm about the outbreak of COVID-19, was summoned by the local police and forced to sign a statement reprimanding his message as a groundless rumor as well as a disturbance to the public order in late December 2019. Two months later, Li died after contracting COVID-19 at his workplace, aged 33 years. This caused shock and outrage across China and Li’s Weibo (China’s equivalent of Twitter) homepage soon became an online “wailing wall,” where people mourned, condoled, and commemorated the whistleblower and complained, questioned, and protested the overstrict government policies relevant to COVID-19 pandemic. This study shows that Weibo offers a place for users to see the mundane life of Li Wenliang, express grief and frustration, and interact with each other to remember Li, whereas another super-powerful Chinese social media, WeChat, allows users to synthesize information about Li, provide analysis and criticism, and circulate the memory of Li through their social networks. Together, these two platforms helped stabilize Chinese internet users’ memory of Li as a whistleblower, a civilian hero, a martyr, and a supporter of free speech and diverse voices, distinguished from the official version. This study contributes to recent scholarly interest in understanding how the technological affordances of social media shape memory work. It also shows that even in a politically constrictive environment, such as China’s media ecology, the space for questioning and protesting still exists, though more nuanced and precarious. Bibo Lin
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13447MANUFACTURING INFLUENCERS: THE REVOLUTIONARY ROLES OF MCNS (MULTI-CHANNEL NETWORKS) IN THE PLATFORM ECONOMY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13445
This study examines how MCNs (Multi-Channel Networks) intervene in the platform economy by manufacturing influencers. Previous studies have explored the emergence of influencers and creators from various perspectives, including platformization, creative labor, and algorithmic power. However, little attention has been paid to another crucial player – MCNs which incubate and train influencers on an industrial scale. MCNs are firms and organizations that collaborate with influencers to facilitate the production, promotion, and monetization of creative content. They serve not only as incubators for micro-entrepreneurs and influencers looking to establish their businesses, but also as a key intermediary between influencers and other stakeholders on platforms. This study combines in-depth interviews with documented lawsuits to explore the role of MCNs in the platform economy, as well as their relationships with influencers. The findings suggest that MCNs significantly shape the platform economy through three strategies: manufacturing influencers, spreading industry lore, and exploiting creativity. On one hand, MCNs help established influencers maintain their success and reduce the risk of creativity while exploiting the labor of aspirants who struggle to enter the platform economy. As such, they constitute a power imbalance by providing business for successful influencers and increasing precarity for ordinary influencers. On the other hand, MCNs continue to expand their business scopes to meet the needs of various stakeholders, mainly platforms, advertisers, and brands. Consequently, MCNs have the ability to facilitate the relationship between these actors, industrialize aspiring influencers, and determine who can participate in creative labor. Fan LiangLi Ji
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13445DIMENSIONS OF DATA QUALITY FOR VALUES IN SMART CITIES DATAFICATION PRACTICES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13475
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 Carl Chineme OkaforRaul Ferrer-ConillSjovaaj Helle
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13475REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH APPS AND EMPOWERMENT – A CONTRADICTION?
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13507
FemTech apps have billions of users globally. Yet, despite their popularity, we know little about these apps, often developed outside controlled and regulated healthcare. While these apps have been criticised for lacking privacy and for enforcing normative ideals on women, they are often marketed in terms of female empowerment. In this presentation, we present our analysis of the empowering potential of menstruation and pregnancy apps. We ask: How do these apps represent reproductive health? What kinds of empowering qualities are present in them? Are there any aspects of the technology that (inadvertently) counteract the empowering purpose? We investigate this through a comparative design investigation using what we call critical app-walkthrough methodology together with researcher use-diaries. We show in our analysis that there are three critical ways in which these apps represent reproductive health events to users through design. We analyze; 1) interface metaphors used to represent temporality, 2) datafication of reproductive health through input and output for intimate data tracking and 3) finally the ways predictions convey certainty over uncertainty and the implications of this. From our results, we present four design sensitivities meant to inspire designers to design for other types of period tracking experiences that might better empower bleeders; support lived temporalities, embrace uncertainty, empower the self, and design less. Beatrice TylstedtHelga SadowskiLina EklundMaria Normark
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13507TESTING THE ROLE OF CATEGORICAL AND RESOURCE INEQUALITIES IN INDIRECT INTERNET USES OF OLDER ADULTS: A PATH ANALYSIS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13505
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. Marina TrkmanBianca C. ReisdorfJošt BartolAndraž Petrovčič
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13505EXPLORING THE DARK SIDE OF CRYPTOCURRENCIES ON FACEBOOK AND TELEGRAM: UNCOVERING MEDIA MANIPULATION AND “GET-RICH-QUICK” DECEPTIVE SCHEMES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13503
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. Massimo Terenzi
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13503TOXICITY AGAINST BRAZILIAN WOMEN DEPUTIES ON TWITTER: A CATEGORIZATION OF DISCURSIVE VIOLENCE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13501
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. Camilla TavaresRaquel Recuero
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13501POTHOLES AND POWER: A MULTIMODAL CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF ‘LOOK AT THIS F*CKIN’ STREET’ ON INSTAGRAM
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13506
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. Alex Turvy
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13506BLEEDING PURPLE, SEEING PINK: DOMESTIC VISIBILITY, GENDER & SOCIAL REPRODUCTION IN THE HOME STUDIOS OF TWITCH.TV
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13504
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. Christine H Tran
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13504INFRASTRUCTURAL INSECURITY: GEOPOLITICS IN THE STANDARDIZATION OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS NETWORKS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13502
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. Niels ten OeverChristoph Becker
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13502FEVER DREAMS AND THE FUTURE OF NOSTALGIA ON TIKTOK
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13408
This paper contributes to the growing body of literature that interrogates the modalities of nostalgia afforded in, by, and through digital media technologies with a focus on its performative dimension within one social formation of nostalgia – the TikTok aesthetic. Drawing on a fine-grained, qualitative artifact analysis of the most viewed video in #nostalgicore on TikTok, this paper asks how the platform’s socio-technical affordances enable and/or constrain Boym’s “restorative” (regressive) and “reflective” (progressive) modalities of nostalgia as a basis for action. Drawing on performance studies and emotion theory, I conceptualize nostalgia as “emotive” to foreground its performative dynamics and allow for further study of nostalgia as a performance or “narrative event” that articulates time, space, and affective feeling. Through the interplay of TikTok’s temporal and spatial affordances, I find that TikTok permits the feeling of the "thick present" to emerge, encouraging liminal, fever dream-like performances of nostalgia in which young people imaginatively construct nostalgic worlds. I argue that this practice constitutes a form of digital placemaking that resists normative assumptions of nostalgia operating on a linear temporal horizon of action (i.e., backward/past vs. forward/future) as it is made, remade, and algorithmically circulated. Contributing to recent work on “algorithmic nostalgia,” these findings suggest that creative and mnemonic practices are entangled in algorithmically structured aesthetic social formations of nostalgia and invite further consideration to how TikTok encourages the “mnemonic imagination” through performance. Keywords: nostalgia, TikTok, performance, temporality, affect, social media affordances Viki Conner
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13408“ARE WE DATING THE SAME GUY?”: COLLECTIVE SENSEMAKING AS A MORAL RESPONSIBILITY IN FACEBOOK GROUPS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13406
Hinge to happily ever after is an arduous process in which dating apps place the burden of risk management on users. Women across the U.S. have joined regional “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” private Facebook groups to manage the ambiguities of dating, crowdsource information on men, and provide social support to other women experiencing the tribulations of modern dating. Using discourse analysis, this study analyzes the collective sensemaking practices of AWDTSG groups in relation to constructing knowledge, managing privacy boundaries, content moderation, and providing social support. Preliminary analysis reveals three major findings: Facebook groups provide a space of empowerment, however anticipated acts of moderation shape how knowledge claims are formed and legitimized. Second, group level moderation enacted by admins is understood by members as a means of community protection against platform interventions and interpersonal conflict with the outgroup. Third, social support is an integral part of knowledge creation, resisting cultural logics that socialize women to see each other as competitors in the dating sphere. These findings contribute to our understanding of how ICTs may be used in the service reclaiming gossip as a mode of resistance through the act of collective sensemaking. Diana Michelle CasteelSarah LeiserZizi Papacharissi
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13406PUSHING BACK: DIGITAL RESISTANCE AS A SENSITIZING CONCEPT
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13409
This paper thus aims to contribute to media, communication, and digital technology studies by proposing a more systematic conceptualization of digital resistance. While the notion of resistance in relation to technology is often connoted negatively and associated the rejection of innovation of change, our approach to digital resistance takes here a new meaning: political and critical. Indeed, the notion of digital resistance is often used in academia and public discourse to describe practices of using, subverting, and creating technologies, usually in a progressive and anti-oppressive perspective (Russell, 2005). However, the term is still relatively undefined, and many practices could be categorized as digital resistance if the term was better defined. We propose in this paper a preliminary but formal conceptualization of digital resistance. Our theorization takes place in the context of a research project on the cartography of digital resistance. Different data collection and analysis activities will be implemented to have a wide and panoramic empirical view of the phenomenon of digital resistance. In this project, the cartographic approach takes on a dual meaning, namely a broad and systematic description of a phenomenon, and the implementation of an original digital device allowing its visualization and potentially participatory enrichment. Our preliminary empirical mapping identified six dimensions to analyze digital resistance that we will present in this paper. Stéphane CoutureSophie ToupinGuillaume Latzko-Toth
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13409MAGIC IN THE AIR: MEMES, MAGIC, AND THE INTERNET
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13407
Leading up to, during, and immediately following the 2016 US election of Donald Trump, there was buzz about magic on the internet. From the meme magic of the cult of Kek to liberal witches performing binding spells, magic seemed to emerge out of thin air. However, while technology and the occult may seem like strange bedfellows, they have a cozier historical relationship then we often acknowledge. For instance, it has been well-documented that there was a synergetic relationship between telegraphy and spiritualism (Sconce, 2000) and we can consider ciphers used to construct grimoires as an antecedent to modern techno-cryptography (Reeds, 1998). In this paper, I historicize internet magic situating the recent online magical wars within the broader context of both digital and occult histories. Just as spiritualist séances articulated hopes and anxieties of mass communication, meme magic speaks to contemporary concerns and desires about information spread. Shira Chess
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13407_EVEN MORE_ COMPLICATED: THE NETWORKED LIVES OF TEENAGERS IN A CONTEXT OF EXCLUSION IN BRAZIL
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13405
This paper stems from a chapter of my Doctoral dissertation. It borrows from the work of boyd (2014) on the experiences of teenagers in social media. In this paper I will present the different usages of the internet and social media by teenagers that live in a context of exclusion. I will focus on teenagers that are placed in care institutions in Brazil, and their struggle with everyday forms of stigma and oppression. To live in a care institution, a.k.a shelters, is a unique experience that is the consequence of rights violations against children and teenagers (Brazilian Statute of the Child and of the Adolescent, 1990). The placement in a shelter is an extreme measure that remove children from their families and communities. To legitimate the state intervention and highlighting the exceptionality and temporality of that measure, the law prioritises family and community conviviality. This is not the case for most of teenagers, as it is unlikely they will be adopted or return, and they will spent most of their teen years there. I will present the narratives of institution and especially teenagers, with which I highlight the link between their experiences of exclusion, the formation of identity and their digital personas. For such, I will use the concept of reflexive identity (Giddens, 1991) and the script approach (Akrich, 1992) to portray how their actions show some kind accomodation and appropriation of the affordances of social media to seek stability in a context of high uncertainty. André Cardozo Sarli
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13405DEFENDING HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE ERA OF DATAFICATION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13473
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. Maria NormarkKarin HanssonMattias Jacobsson
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13473WITH OR WITHOUT THE CROWD? THE INFLUENCE OF CODER CHARACTERISTICS ON CODING DECISIONS COMPARING CROWDWORKERS AND TRADITIONAL CODERS.
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13471
Standardized manual content analysis is an important methodology to capture the messages in journalistic and social media. Specifically, for supervised machine learning aproaches, human-generated training data is needed. The process of coding as well as the selection of suitable coders is crucial for obtaining good data quality. However, little research has been done on how the coding process should be designed and how personal characteristics of the coders might influence data quality. This blind spot becomes even more crucial because coding is nowadays increasingly performed with the help of crowdworkers. When working with such anonymous coders, the process of coding can then be less controlled by the researchers, which can lead to loss of quality. In our comparative mixed-methods study we compare data from a content analysis on the topic of legalizing abortion (n = 300 tweets). We conducted this in two ways: Firstly, with a team of four student coders who also received training and secondly with 150 crowdworkers. All coders had to complete a short survey on their socio-demographics and personality traits. The results show that both validity and reliability are higher for the student coders, especially for tricky coding tasks. Further, multivariate (logistic) regression analysis reveals that personal characteristics such as formal education and emotional sensitivity also have an impact on coding quality. Hence, with a reflective selection of coders as well as a thoughtful design of the coding process and the codebook, the quality of data collection can be increased—even when relying on crowdworkers. Julia Niemann-LenzAnja DittrichJule Scheper
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13471UNRAVELING DISINFORMATION: EXAMINING THE HUMAN INFRASTRUCTURE OF MISINFORMATION IN BRAZIL THROUGH THE LENS OF HETEROMATION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13469
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. David NemerWilliam Marks
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13469WHERE IN SOCIETY WILL AI AGENTS FIT? A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING ATTITUDES TOWARD AI OCCUPATIONAL ROLES FROM THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES OF STATUS, IDENTITY, AND ONTOLOGY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13474
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. Ekaterina NovozhilovaMays KateDongpeng HuangHongchan LeeJames Katz
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13474PERILS OF PLACE: GEOFENCES AND PREDATORY PLATFORM INTIMACIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13472
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. Rebecca NooneArun Jacob
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13472PLATFORMS, POWER & ADVERTISING: ANALYSING RELATIONS OF DEPENDENCY IN THE DIGITAL ADVERTISING ECOSYSTEM
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13470
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. David NieborgThomas Poell
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13470EVERYDAY MISOGYNY: DISCOURSES ABOUT DEPP V HEARD ON TWITTER
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13468
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. Lucinda NelsonNicolas Suzor
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13468EXPLORING HOW U.S. K-12 EDUCATION ADDRESSES PRIVACY LITERACY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13439
As children grow up immersed in digital environments, scholars and policymakers emphasize the importance of helping children learn how to navigate privacy online. Prior work has found that educators recognize this need for privacy lessons but do not always feel equipped to teach them. Indeed, the term “privacy” has many meanings and the concept of privacy does not easily fit in a specific subject, intersecting with social studies, computer science, media literacy, digital literacy, and digital citizenship. Scholars have begun developing frameworks for privacy education, but such efforts will have a higher chance of success if they can be integrated into existing educational standards. Thus, in this study we are analyzing U.S. K-12 educational standards to understand whether and how they address privacy literacy. Our initial analysis has found that 44 of the 50 U.S. states have implemented educational standards related to privacy, largely as part of library, computer science, or social studies. The main privacy-related topics in state standards include being careful about posting information online and managing passwords. These preliminary findings suggest that while privacy is part of many state education standards, there are opportunities to help educators bring a more nuanced approach to privacy into their classrooms. Priya KumarLily Hyde
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13439REAL BUT FAKE, REAL BECAUSE FAKE: TECHNOLOGICALLY AUGMENTED K-POP IDOLS AND META-AUTHENTICITY
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13437
Through the case of the technologically augmented K-pop idol group Mad Monster, this article explores the participatory culture in the supposedly revolutionary proliferation of “humanlike, realistic” digital technologies by drawing on the concept of meta-authenticity, loosely defined as the desire or achievement of authenticity in practices of inauthenticity. I focus on the implications of the social integration of artificial agents and augmentative tools for humans, not to re-establish the human-nonhuman binary but to illuminate the persisting human presence and involvement. Mad Monster’s authenticity was achieved through—not despite—their blatantly “inauthentic” technological augmentations like extreme facial and voice filters. They were co-managed to perform as per “human” authenticity expectations while drawing on the presumption of inauthenticity: by the comedy duo, their fans, existing institutions, and commercial interests—the locus of their authenticity was in collaborative performances. Mad Monster is a case of contemporary meta-authenticity that demands a shift of focus from technological states to collaborative performances around it: how “humanlike” or technologically augmented cyborgs are involved in social spheres matters more than what they are. Their success as “fake but/thus real” AR-filtered, autotuned celebrities also warns of how diverse humans’ crucial contributions can be easily hidden in cyborg phenomena that stress their technological components, and how accountability can be diverted. The revolutionary potential of cyborgs rests not in technical achievements but in the collaborations of the actors involved: questioning, shaking, and breaking the standards. Do Own Kim
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13437THE WORLD ACCORDING TO TIKTOK: AN OBSERVATORY ON CROSS-NATIONAL CONTENT PRIORITIZATION AND PLATFORM-MEDIATED PROXIMITIES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13435
The present paper showcases a research tool that makes data for a global, cross-national analysis of TikTok available to and navigable by the research community. Next to justifying the necessity for this approach and providing an overview of to the tool, the paper illustrates its potential by presenting the analysis of a dataset comprised of daily snapshots of TikTok’s homepage collected over 4 months from 197 countries and territories in the world. Our results shed light on which content is prioritized by TikTok on a global scale, and introduces the notion of ‘platform-mediated proximity’ - i.e., the clustering of countries according to patterns of co-recommendations promoted by the platform. Preliminary results obtained on a subset of the data suggest that TikTok’s cross-national content prioritization patterns generate forms of platform-mediated proximities that, in most cases, follow geographical lines of clustering at the regional level, with notable and interesting exceptions. Natalie KerbySalvatore RomanoMiazia SchuelerDavide Beraldo
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13435DIGITAL LABOR AND RENTIER PLATFORM CAPITALISM: REFORM OR REVOLUTION?
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13432
Digital labor has become an umbrella term for describing a range of digitally mediated practices from paid work in the gig economy (Srnicek 2017) to cultivating a personal brand online (Scolere, Pruchniewska, and Duffy 2018). This wellspring of activities now referred to as labor has muddied the waters, making digital labor an ambiguous concept at best (Gandini 2021; Goodwin 2022). This framing of user activity as labor also has limitations, as it necessarily produces reformist, rather than revolutionary, political ends. Following Sadowski (2020), this paper challenges the conceptual framework of digital labor by re-theorizing the user/platform relation as rentier capitalism. Engels (1970) explained how tenants confront landlords not as sellers of labor-power but buyers of a commodity, and we argue that typical social media users confront platforms in an analogous way. Platforms thus only circulate existing value rather than create it, and this distinction matters in understanding their role in economic crises. Because the digital labor concept misidentifies the user/platform relationship and concedes the commoditization of communication, reformist demands emerge from this discourse, like “Wages for Facebook” (Ptak 2014 as cited in Jung 2014) or data ownership as compensation (Chakravorti 2020). Capitalist data relations (Couldry and Mejias 2020) and the profit motive of corporate platforms cannot be addressed by renumerating users. As platforms attain infrastructural status (Plantin et al. 2018), our politics must reflect the need for their transformation into public utilities with democratic accountability, a revolutionary demand that has been displaced in the turn towards digital labor. D W KamishKayla Hilstob
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13432ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF GLOBAL ATTENTION ON SUBREDDIT COMMUNITY PRACTICES: THE CASE OF /R/HONGKONG
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13440
What happens to internet communities after a global media event puts them in the public spotlight? Does the flood of new members change a given community's practices, structures, and discussions? Do things go back to normal? These questions lie at the heart of our research project, which examines how a local subcommunity on the popular website Reddit changed as its matter of focus became a global discussion subject. Specifically, this study analyses changing posting practices on /r/hongkong, a local subreddit whose popularity skyrocketed in 2019, with the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement garnering worldwide media coverage. Now, with global attention shifting away from the protests and the 2020 Hong Kong National Security law, the subreddit no longer exhibits the same level of activity. But what can be learnt beyond simply looking at the numbers? Can a qualitative change be observed on /r/hongkong? In this extended abstract, we examine the existing research on subreddits as a community, consider the potential significance of media events and subsequent influxes of new users for community practice, outline our methodological approach, and highlight some preliminary findings. Dmitry KuznetsovMilan Ismangil
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13440EPISTEMOLOGIES OF MISSING DATA: COVID DATA BUILDERS AND THE PRODUCTION AND MAINTENANCE OF MARGINALIZED COVID DATASETS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13438
During COVID-19, countless dashboards have served as central media where people learn critical information about the pandemic. Varied actors, including news organizations, government agencies, universities, and NGOs created and maintained these dashboards, conducting the onerous labor of collecting, categorizing, and taking care of COVID data. This study uncovers different forms of data practices and labor behind the building of these dashboards, based on in-depth interviews with volunteers and practitioners across India and the United States who have participated in COVID dashboard projects. Specifically, we are interested in projects that have focused on underrepresented or missing COVID data such as COVID cases in prisons and long-term care facilities, racial/ethnic breakdown of cases, as well as deaths due to COVID enforcement. These data builders employed sometimes creative, sometimes mundane and laborious data practices to not simply collect, but to produce these data that are often invisible in the official COVID dataset. In this process of data production, dashboard builders grappled with the questions of how certain data is collected, who/what is missing from the dataset, and how these data voids shape and manipulate our understanding of the pandemic. Interviewing 74 data builders who participated in COVID dashboard projects, this paper demonstrates the range of underrepresented and messy COVID data that these data builders have identified, fixed, and maintained to render them useful: disappearing data, lumped data, and absent data. Such critical engagement with messy COVID data reveals different data injustices that have tremendous potential to affect future pandemic preparation and management. Youngrim KimMegan Finn
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13438COLLECTIVE SENSEMAKING AND INTERSEMIOTIC DISSONANCE: A STUDY OF CRISIS DISCOURSE ON TIKTOK
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13436
Social media applications are an important medium of crisis information exchange. Of growing importance and use is TikTok, an application with a multi-modal curation structure that enables users to share content of various interests. Previous TikTok scholarship on crisis research has not considered how the application sustains a cultural understanding of a crisis event. Using a semiotic analysis approach, this study explores TikTok’s role in crisis communication by examining the process of collective sensemaking of the Port of Beirut, Lebanon explosion on August 4th, 2020. The preliminary findings reveal intersemiotic dissonance obscuring crisis discourse, thus negatively influencing the process of collective sensemaking. The results of this study motivate further research that examines tacit guidelines for crisis communication on TikTok and similar applications. Christy KhouryJeff Hemsley
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13436“WOULD YOU DATE A MAID?”
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13433
The refers to a common video trend we encountered as we set out to analyze how FDWs use TikTok to express personal and sexual sovereignty amid constraining structural surveillance at the level of policy, employer-employee dynamics, and social restrictions. Academic scholars from various disciplines have critiqued the nature of migration regimes in which foreign domestic workers (FDW) are hired, drawing from the fields of social, health, and economic justice. We focus on FDWs in Singapore, where these conditions are enforced and rationalized through laws and government-owned-media that entrench socially constructed divisions. These conditions are rationalized and perpetuated through rhetoric that stigmatizes, stereotypes, and enforces segregation. Intersecting layers of marginalization are created by a labor system that maximally extracts and exploits low-wage migrant workers. Discursive techniques used by state-owned media and legislation also portray FDW as ungovernable and promiscuous employer property that supersedes and eclipses their civil rights (Kaur-Gill, Pandi & Dutta, 2021). Krittiya Kantachote
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13433EXPLORING FACEBOOK’S “WHY AM I SEEING THIS AD” FEATURE: MEANINGFUL TRANSPARENCY OR FURTHER OBFUSCATION?
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13389
For more than a decade, digital advertising has been the primary means of funding online content and services. The evolution of digital advertising towards algorithmically targeted advertising, believed to be highly personalized and tailored to the individual, has presented new challenges for public oversight. Whereas previously, public concern centred on the content of ads and their exposure to audiences, the rise of platform-based advertising means focus has shifted to the distribution of ads and how they reach us. In response to public concerns and regulatory pressures, companies such as Meta (the parent of Facebook) have introduced transparency tools for researchers and consumers to ‘explain’ the function of advertising on the platform, including the Ad Library and the “Why Am I Seeing This Ad” feature. Despite being a central feature of Meta’s response towards increasing external scrutiny, little is known about how the WAIST feature works, or how it operates at a population level. In response we offer a description of WAIST data collected at scale, informed from a nationwide citizen data donation project of Facebook advertising. We analyse this data with a view to better understand Meta’s algorithmic advertising system, and to inform questions regarding the sufficiency of WAIST as an algorithmic explanatory mechanism for users. Daniel AngusJean BurgessNicholas CarahLauren HaydenAbdul Obeid
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13389PROACTIVE MEMEFICATION AND POLITICAL CATHARSIS: HOW ONLINE HUMOR PROMPTS POLITICAL EXPRESSION AMONG SUDANESE SOCIAL MEDIA USERS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13387
Striving to advance our understanding of how social media is used by Sudanese people to engage in politics and continue their resistance against an authoritarian regime, this study examines how online humor facilitated political expression after the December Revolution. Using thematic analysis of user-generated content posted on the Shabab Hilween Facebook page, the main social media outlet of prominent Sudanese youth content creators, this research attempts to highlight how youth-created humorous videos prompted political expression among Sudanese social media users. The findings highlight the significance of proactive memefication and templatization as an act the page owners use to generate community user-generated content. Hundreds of memefied screenshots created or appropriated by users were observed in the comment section to address unfolding political events. This begs the question of what content is essentially popular culture for Sudanese people, especially youth, who, due to years of censorship and propaganda, have no interest in mainstream media? This study discusses the role of Sudanese content creators in addressing this cultural void. The analysis also reveals how Sudanese social media users sought political catharsis and collective relief from the Shabab Hilween page’s humorous videos and the comment section. Abubakr Abdelbagi
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13387RESEARCHING UNDER PLATFORMS’ GAZE: RETHINKING THE CHALLENGES OF PLATFORM GOVERNANCE RESEARCH
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13390
Researching on platforms through platforms poses challenges to researchers, particularly when observing subcultures and content at the margins. Inspired by Massanari’s essay on researching under the “alt-right” gaze, this paper uses autoethnography to address the impact the system of platform governance has on researcher vulnerability in data collection, persona management and results dissemination, particularly for researchers gathering data censored by platforms and for early-career researchers constructing their personae through digital media. My goal is to examine how the intersection of platform power, academic precarity and the creator economy affects early-career researchers and academics. At the heart of this are the questions: How can researchers gather data, disseminate results and establish a professional profile under platforms’ all-encompassing gaze? What does platform governance and its focus on specific areas of control mean for researching content and users at the margins? What risks do platforms themselves pose to researchers’ work? And how does the broader precarity of particularly early-career academic work intersect with the effects of platform power? To this end, this paper starts with personal experiences of censorship in research to define ‘platform’s gaze’ as gendered, raced, heteronormative and puritan surveillance, constructing a social reality where marginalised individuals and dissent are both hyper-visible and vulnerable to harassment and silencing. It continues by discussing the increasing digital labour required by the ‘impact agenda’ and the difficulty of managing a researcher online persona in an age of growing digital censorship, concluding with considerations on activist interventions in the platform governance field. Carolina Are
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13390GAMING PLATFORMS AS CHAOTIC NEUTRAL?: TOXIC PERFORMANCE, COMMUNITY RESISTANCE, AND AGONISTIC POTENTIAL
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13388
In the post-gamergate era, much has been written about the toxicity of online multiplayer video gamespaces. Yet, game scholars agree that the actual definition of the term ‘toxic’ is slippery. There is also consensus that toxicity is a highly context-dependent phenomenon reliant on the relation of players to one another but extending further to include the technical elements of the game (Canossa et al., 2021; Hilvert-Bruce & Neill, 2020; Kou, 2020; Kowert, 2020). Past scholarship in this area also illustrates that these spaces are deeply gendered and center masculine normativity (Cote, 2020; Gray, 2020; Ruberg, 2019; Shaw, 2015). Players from various positionalities may enter conflict when there is dissent over the definition and norms of the space. In these instances of conflict there is the potential for agonism (Laclau & Mouffe, 1985). We employed cultural probes in tandem with focus groups and interviews to better understand how players experience toxicity in online gaming spaces. Emerging from participants’ conversations, this paper explores performative behaviours which are emblematic of performing toxicity or ‘counterplay’. We propose three common instances of counterplay: antagonistic counterattack, when a player reciprocates or matches the toxic behaviour of an antagonist; ludic mithridatism, when a player develops a threshold for tolerating toxicity in a gamespace; and playful transgression, when a player or group of players performs counter-hegemonic identity-work. Philippa R AdamsBen SchollMaria Sommers
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13388WEIZENBAUM'S PERFORMANCE AND THEORY MODES: LESSONS FOR CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT WITH LARGE LANGUAGE MODEL CHATBOTS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13518
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. Misti YangMatthew Salzano
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13518TOWARDS ANTICASTE INTERNET: THE OPERATION, CHALLENGES AND ASPIRATIONS OF BAHUJAN PUBLISHERS.
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13517
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.. Yatharth
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13517IS IT (MICRO)CHEATING? HOW SOCIAL MEDIA CONFOUND ASSUMPTIONS IN ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13419
Social media have changed the ways we communicate, meet others, and form intimate relationships. However, technology can also mediate intimate partner surveillance and abuse (Muise, 2009; Tokunaga, 2010). One of the most explicit ways to understand these shifts is through the transgressing of relationship boundaries, defined and enforced by settler-colonial notions of compulsory monogamy (TallBear, 2020). Anxieties around cheating have evolved along with our technologies, as evidenced by ambiguous new terms like “microcheating” and “emotional cheating” (Lusinski, 2018). In this in-progress, mixed-methods study, we examine new definitions of cheating through analyzing discussions about potential transgressions on Reddit. Specifically, we investigate 1) which behaviors cause uncertainty in emerging forms of social media-enabled infidelity and 2) the degree to which relationship discourse online naturalizes the extension of compulsory monogamy into online space. For our pilot analysis, we used computational techniques to elicit common subjects within subreddit posts to then analyze qualitatively. We began with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), an unsupervised natural language processing tool, to organize Reddit posts and comments by topic (Blei, 2012). Then we qualitatively analyzed Reddit discourse by using critical discourse analysis. Our pilot analysis suggested a belief that proof of (in)fidelity can be found on a partner’s smartphone, such as by reading texts. This orientation toward evidence then justifies surveillance and hacking of a partner’s phone and computer presence, construing the invasion of privacy as the right to truth. This preliminary finding suggests that discourse around transgressive behaviors on social media likely reiterates compulsory monogamy and settler sexuality. Margaret E FosterAspen K.B. OmapangMarina Johnson-Zafiris
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13419REVOLUTIONARY DISCOURSES IN A TIME CAPSULE: A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF CANONICAL, INTELLECTUAL LITERATURE CONCERNING THE SOCIAL IMPACT AND SIGNIFICANCE OF THE INTERNET.
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13420
Whilst the internet’s development can be traced back to the 1940s (Turner, 2006; Flichy 2015), the rhetoric of a digital revolution primarily emerged during the early 1990s and mid-00s and was often produced by the US-based academic community which has been intrinsically involved with the advancement of the internet. The dominant conceptualizations put forward in their popular, scholarly writings about the technology’s past and future, became authoritative in our academic understanding of the internet’s social impact and significance. Subsequently, notions like ‘the electronic highway’ were adopted in legislative and popular discourse which, in turn, influenced how the internet was understood, designed, and used on a broader, societal level. Notable authors of these influential texts - Howard Rheingold, Nicholas Negroponte, Sherry Turkle, and Geert Lovink - wrote their findings based on their own experiences with internet initiatives and from their particular theoretical backgrounds and positionality. Most importantly, these texts present valuable information as if coming from a time capsule; often framed with a rhetoric of transformation, the writers themselves contribute to the idea of a revolutionary internet following optimistic notions of digital utopianism and technological solutionism, situated in a particular Zeitgeist. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how these revolutionary notions developed over time and what their grander impact was on our contemporary conceptions, in and outside the influential American context. This is achieved by conducting a critical, historiographical analysis of canonical, intellectual literature about the early internet and thus re-contextualizes it as historical traces itself. Nathalie FridzemaSusan AasmanRik SmitTom Slootweg
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13420INVITATION TO LISTEN: MAPPING CLUBHOUSE’S EARLY INVITE-ONLY SOCIAL CAPITAL NETWORK
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13418
Clubhouse has attracted roughly 10 million users to its platform since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic as an invite-only, drop-in audio social network app. Yet, few studies examine Clubhouse as a new platform for conducting social media research, and even fewer examine the early invite-only growth of social audio apps. This study theorizes Clubhouse as an emerging social media platform during the COVID pandemic, and empirically investigates its communicative capacity, networked connections, and social dynamics. The primary contribution is a social network analysis of Clubhouse’s early users, wherein segmented networked publics based on invite links emerge. While some researchers explain that the growth of invite-only social networks is often attributed to a platform’s ‘cool factor,’ the growth of the early Clubhouse network reveals a hierarchy of social exclusivity among the networked publics, which indicates an embedded capitalist social structure and connection that grants more access to those with more social and economic power. These networked relationships provide insights into how invite-based emerging viral social media platforms are formed. Cindy FangAndrew Iliadis
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13418THE IMPERIAL HAIKU COMMISSION APPROVES THIS MESSAGE’: AN EXAMINATION OF AUTOMATED PLAY AND CULTURE AS (RE)DESIGNED BY BOTS.
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13516
This paper examines a community called Subreddit Simulator on the social media platform Reddit. It is a digital space where human and social bot co-exist on an ontologically equal footing to co-create culture, community and a sense of 'play'. We recognize this community as a pioneer community against a larger backdrop of deep mediatization. With the recent attention given to bots such as Chat GPT it is imperative that we do not overlook communities in which progressive and revolutionary practice has been happening for years. This extended abstract proposes an ethnographic approach to viewing the Subreddit Simulator community while the longer form work will bring the ethnographic results to bear to discuss philosophically the opportunities and implications of reimagining networked spaces in a less human-centric manor. Daniel Whelan-ShamyDominique Carlon
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13516PERCEIVED ENTITLEMENT AND OBLIGATION BETWEEN TIKTOK CREATORS AND AUDIENCES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13515
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. TX Watson
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13515THESE GIRLS (STRIP) FOR THE CLOUT: EXPLORING ASPIRATIONAL, EMOTIONAL AND EROTIC LABOR OF BLACK WOMEN HIP-HOP ARTISTS ON ONLYFANS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13417
In the digital age, OnlyFans is suggested to be a new form of sexual empowerment, financial autonomy and social agency for Black women working as strippers, backup dancers and video models, particularly those ancillaries to the rap music industry. Through interviews and participant observation, I examine the everyday labor of Black women who work as sexually explicit content creators on OnlyFans while also building a public persona as artists in Hip-Hop culture. Findings suggested that despite financial opportunities, respondents felt ambivalent by the monetization opportunities afforded by this digital space. Even so, respondents enjoyed the affordances of promoting their OnlyFans content on social media to gain digital clout - a form of Hip-Hop influenced cultural capital that follows the logic of likes, followers, and re-shares of one’s social media content. Ultimately, this study introduces insights on the evolution of Hip-Hop culture’s relationship with sex work, digital Black feminism and the attention economy. Jabari Miles Evans
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2022i0.13417CONSPIRITUALITY CAPITALISM: YOGA, AUTHENTICITY, AND WHITENESS ON A STREAMING VIDEO PLATFORM
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13416
Entering “best online yoga classes,” into Google Search returns lists from fitness websites like VeryWell Fit, Yogi Times, Prevention, Self, and Shape—most of these sites will include Gaia.com, a subscription-based streaming video platform, in their recommendation lists, labeling it variously as “best for the whole family,” “best intermediate/advanced,” and, most notably, “best for delving into yogic philosophy.” None of the blurbs written about Gaia in these articles mention its thousands of videos about conspiracy theories. These articles also fail to mention the connection between Gaia and Gaiam, one of the largest global yoga equipment brands. Formerly GaiamTV, Gaia.com offers videos and articles about yoga alongside videos and articles about UFOs, extraterrestrials, alternative archaeology, and universal consciousness, among a variety of other topics related to conspiracy theories, the paranormal, and new age spirituality. This paper examines Gaia, Inc., as a case study in conspirituality capitalism. The blatant obfuscation of the connection between Gaiam yoga equipment and the Gaia media empire functions to strengthen the mechanisms of conspirituality capitalism: not only are supporters of conspiratorial and alternative content financially contributing to its production through subscriptions to Gaia, but yoga practitioners who purchase Gaiam equipment may be unknowingly supporting Gaia’s conspiritual content. Using qualitative, grounded-theory-informed content analysis of video and textual content hosted on the site, as well as participant observation at two Gaia conferences held at the GaiaSphere Event Center outside Denver, Colorado, this paper, which is exploratory in nature, will introduce the term conspirituality capitalism and examine Gaia as a case study in it. Yvonne Eadon
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13416MINERAL EXPLORATION IN INDIGENOUS LANDS: THE DISCURSIVE NORMALIZATION OF ILLEGAL MINING IN BRAZIL
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13514
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. Taiane de Oliveira Volcan
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13514DESIGNING ETHICAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) SYSTEMS WITH MEANINGFUL YOUTH PARTICIPATION: IMPLICATIONS AND CONSIDERATIONS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13512
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. Kanishk VermaTijana MilosevicBrian DavisJames O'higgins Norman
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13512BIG AI: THE CLOUD AS MARKETPLACE AND INFRASTRUCTURE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13510
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. Fernando N van der VlistAnne HelmondFabian Ferrari
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13510THE WEIRD GOVERNANCE OF FACT-CHECKING: FROM WATCHDOGS TO CONTENT MODERATORS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13513
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. Otavio VinhasMarco Bastos
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13513ONE HUNDRED NAZI SCREENS: INTERFACES AND THE STRUCTURE OF U.S. WHITE NATIONALIST DIGITAL NETWORKS ON TELEGRAM
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13511
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. Reed Van Schenck
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13511SUPER-APPIFICATION: CONGLOMERATION IN THE MOBILE ECOSYSTEM
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13509
“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. Fernando van der VlistAnne HelmondMichael DieterEsther Weltevrede
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13509TRACING MEDIA SOLIDARITIES WITH MUSLIMS: CONTESTING ISLAMOPHOBIA ON TWITTER
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13480
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. Elizabeth PooleEd de QuinceyEva GiraudJohn Richardson
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13480DARK DESIGN PATTERNS AND GAMIFICATION AS THE HEART OF DATING APPLICATIONS’ BUSINESS MODELS
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13478
Dating applications represent a paradox: on the one hand, they provide a monetized platform for people to form relationships, yet on the other hand, the more people who find partners, the less revenue goes to the company. With this paradox as a backdrop, this extended abstract examines the business model of dating applications by address the following research question: What characterizes the business models of dating applications? To provide a nuanced picture of this, we conducted a 2022-study combining data about dating apps and app users: (A) 22 in-depth interviews with current and previous users (aged 24–49 years) of Norwegian dating applications users; (B) a systematic analysis of 30 serious dating apps in Google Play and Apple’s App Store; and (C) a diary study of four of the 30 dating applications. The findings reveals that dating apps follows a business model that creates revenue through a mix of an in-app purchase-model and subscription fees. The apps typically market themselves as free, yet they use several dark design and gamification features to create and spark emotional curiosity and engagement that in turn brings in revenue to dating app companies. Several of the users stated that they have experienced the apps as manipulative, emotionally exhausting and that they created the same kind of “addiction” or “cravings” they experienced in social media. Clearly, design is not only power, design gives the dating app companies power where designing for emotional engagement is a key value-creating element in their business models. Lene PettersenFaltin Karlsen
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13478RETHINKING THE SOCIAL IN SOCIAL MEDIA
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13476
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. Susanna PaasonenJenny SundénKatrin TiidenbergMaria Vihlman
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13476WHO WATCHES THE BIRDWATCHERS? CREATING A ROGUE ARCHIVE OF TWITTER’S ONGOING COLLAPSE
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13479
Community Notes (formerly named “Birdwatch”) is Twitter’s crowdsourced fact-checking program to combat mis- and dis-information. By signing up to be a Birdwatch contributor, a user can add contextual notes and commentary to other tweets as well as rate the contributions of others. User submissions to the Community Notes program also serve as metacommentary on the platform more generally. Beyond their fact-checking role, Birdwatch notes also illuminate how some users perceived Elon Musk’s recent purchase of the platform and how the subsequent changes aligned with their own understandings of what the platform ought to be. This paper describes Birdwatch Archive, a project to archive Twitter’s Community Notes program by parsing the data that Twitter publicly releases from the Birdwatch program and displaying it in a searchable and organized fashion that is accessible and useful to researchers. Using the anonymous user identification strings from each TSV file, the website enables researchers to assess how frequently users contribute to the Community Notes program by grouping notes and ratings they have provided. Even as Twitter continues to devolve and collapse, we can try to learn from how users described and understood the platform. When studying major platforms, we cannot rely solely upon the data made accessible by the platform itself. Instead, we must look for opportunities to create “rogue archives” of online settings, which includes turning sources that are not as frequently viewed by most users. Ben Tadayoshi Pettis
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13479ALGOSPEAK AND ALGO-DESIGN IN PLATFORMED BOOK PUBLISHING: REVOLUTIONARY CREATIVE TACTICS IN DIGITAL PARATEXT TO CIRCUMVENT CONTENT MODERATION
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13477
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. Claire Parnell
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13477DARK PATTERNS AND PEDAGOGY: EXPANDING SCHOLARSHIP AND CURRICULUM ON MANIPULATIVE MARKETING PRACTICES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13430
This conference paper addresses gaps in scholarship and pedagogy surrounding the phenomenon of “dark patterns” in digital marketing and interface design by showcasing three curriculum-building projects. Dark patterns refer to a set of design strategies that co-opt the human-centred values advocated for in the fields of user experience (UX) design and human-computer interaction (HCI) to manipulate users into taking actions contrary to their personal interests. Recent dark patterns research has clustered within the fields of HCI, media studies, and game studies, with a focus on e-commerce and online gambling platforms. The presented projects put this established research into conversation with scholarship from business and marketing, science and technology studies, cognitive neuroscience, and disability studies to both create a more holistic definition of dark patterns and implement this expanded definition into university course curricula. These include $2 , focused on contextualizing dark patterns within historical market segmentation and merchandising strategies; $2 , on broadening the definition of dark patterns to include non-screen interfaces; and $2 , on analyzing how dark patterns have a disproportionate effect on individuals with certain cognitive disabilities. Collectively, these projects aimed to grant a greater historicity and social context to the phenomenon of dark patterns and introduce them as a utilizable pedagogical concept within the disciplines of communications, technology, and design. The findings of these projects are presented through the sharing of pedagogical materials, informal and formal feedback, and planned curriculum revisions. Mathew IantornoDan GuadagnoloAdrian Petterson
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13430EXPLORING THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE OF TRANS TECHNOLOGY DESIGN
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13428
Transgender people face substantial challenges in the world, such as discrimination, harassment, and lack of access to basic resources. Some of these challenges could be addressed to some extent with technology. In this paper I examine the world of trans technology design through interviews with 115 creators of trans technologies: apps, games, health resources, and other types of technology. I demonstrate that trans technology design processes are often deeply personal, and focus on the technology creator’s needs and desires. Thus, trans technology design can be empowering because technology creators have agency to create tools they need to navigate the world. However, in some cases when trans communities are not involved in design processes, this can lead to overly individualistic design that speaks primarily to more privileged trans people’s needs. Oliver L Haimson
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13428EQUALITY THROUGH EXCLUSION? TOWARDS A NEW CONCEPTUALIZATION OF DEMOCRATIC EXCLUSION IN THE CONTEXT OF DIGITAL PUBLIC VENUES
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13429
In order to hinder attacks on democratic norms and processes in digital public venues, designing strategies of exclusion is a pressing concern. Nevertheless, we lack systematic studies of how digital public venues should be governed to protect – rather than undermine – democratic values through exclusion. The purpose of this contribution is to offer a systematic theorization of the concept of democratic exclusion in the context of digital public venues. I will in particular draw on two strands of literature within democratic theory which have contributed greatly to the normative theorization of democratic exclusion, but have done so in relation to other types of political settings: the works within feminist political theory on exclusion of dominant groups within parliaments (e.g. Dovi 2009; Murray 2014) and the literature on hate speech regulation and democratic self-defence against (primarily) antidemocratic parties (e.g. Müller 2016; Invernizzi Accetti and Zuckerman 2017; Malkopoulou and Kirshner 2019). First, I will analyze if and how these previous contributions can be applied to the specific context of digital public venues, where special conditions of access and visibility apply. I will then assess to what extent the platforms’ existing governing strategies and policies concerning the exclusion of problematic content or accounts are compatible with the relevant exclusion principles formulated in these works. Building on this analysis, in its final parts the study will move on to carve out more specific suggestions for how exclusion on digital venues should be governed, and what principles should guide this governance. Malin Charlotte Holm
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13429*EXPLORING NIGERIA`S ENDSARS MOVEMENT THROUGH THE NEXUS OF MEMORY*
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13508
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. Silas Udenze
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13508LIFESTYLE GOVERNMENTALITY IN CHINA: GOVERNING THE ENTREPRENEURIAL CITIZEN SUBJECTS THROUGH LIFESTYLE PRACTICES ON XIAOHONGSHU (RED)
https://spir.aoir.org/ojs/index.php/spir/article/view/13431
Xiaohongshu (Red), the Chinese biggest lifestyle sharing platform, as a collaborator and partner with China’s national cultural and political project (Wang, 2021), aligns with multiple strategies of governing, shaping and guiding citizens through lifestyle practices. In this article, I propose the term ‘lifestyle governmentality’ to capture Red as a cultural technology of citizenship that directs self-managing subjects toward the desired outcomes sought by the institutions of the official government. This research project combines a systematic document analysis of regulations, notices, and guidelines related to platform governance, discourse analysis of Red's content, with walk-through method, and in-depth interviews with Red influencers (n=12) and users (n=35). I suggest that the inducement offered by Red to facilitate and improve users’ personal life, fulfillment and success through lifestyle sharing is distinctly tied to a hybrid model of governmentality that combines neoliberal and socialist political reasoning about governance, enterprise, and social welfare. Ran Ju
Copyright (c) 2023 AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research
2023-12-312023-12-3110.5210/spir.v2023i0.13431