August 2021 - Air-L - lists.aoir.org

2021 Nancy Baym Book Award Winner
by Michelle, Association of Internet Researchers 16 Aug '21

16 Aug '21

It is our great pleasure to announce that the Nancy Baym Book Award committee has chosen Distributed Blackness: African American Cybercultures (2020 NYU Press) by André Brock, Jr., as this year’s winner. Distributed Blackness is a joyful exploration of Black cybercultural expression, which, along the way, claims its rightful place in the history of Black intellectualism and forges new theoretical paths for AoIR scholarship. Brock carefully constructs a methodology, Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis, which affords a powerful way to trace how identities are constructed online. Moreover, he makes a case for studying the libidinal economy - energies that emerge from desire and fear - as a key conceptual window into the circulation of digital media. Brock then explores Web browsers, Black Twitter, and Black discourse, concluding with a deeply theoretical conception of Black technoculture. And, like all of the best internet scholarship, Distributed Blackness resonates beyond digital networks. We’re witnessing a backlash against calls for social justice — made most explicit by the transnational attacks on "critical race theory," but also visible in many smaller acts of intolerance and marginalization. In the face of this, Brock invites us to “happy reading” and a joyous affirmation of Blackness online. It is, to use a term from the book, a statement of pathos, a pleasurable excess of life in a time when life seems imperiled – and where the perils are not equally distributed across society. It is an essential book for AoIR and beyond. This is the point at which the committee would usually say how hard it was to pick a winner, but this year it was easy. The committee was unanimous in its choice, and abundant with praise. This is to take nothing away from the many other brilliant books we read this year, and we are grateful for all of the submissions. AoIR would like to acknowledge and thank the committee members – Nancy Baym, Niki Cheong, Rob Gehl, Nicholas John (Chair), Heidi McKee, Panayiota Tsatsou and Robert Tynes – for their work in judging this year’s profusion of wonderful books, and Michelle Gardner for making sure all of the books reached all of the judges. Finally, you can find André Brock on Twitter (@DocDre) and read his (open access) book online: http://opensquare.nyupress.org/books/9781479811908/

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Fwd: Registration now open for 'Information Overload? Music Studies in the Age of Abundance', University of Birmingham, 8-10 Sept
by Christopher Haworth 16 Aug '21

16 Aug '21

Dear Colleagues, We are delighted to announce that registration is now open for ‘Information Overload? Music Studies in the Age of Abundance’, University of Birmingham, Wednesday 8th - Friday 10th September (all online via Zoom). This conference seeks to gather researchers interested in the epistemological, methodological, ethical, and disciplinary problems that arise when studying music in the age of abundance. A link to the full conference programme and registration can be found below. The conference will feature two keynotes: Robin James (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), 'No Genres, Just Vibes: perceiving ourselves how AI and finance perceive us' Nick Seaver (Tufts University), 'Too Much Music: Informatic Cosmology and the Myth of Overload' In addition to the keynotes, we will have a panel of guest respondents on day 3, Sept 10: Paula Harper (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) David Hesmondhalgh (University of Leeds) Noortje Marres (University of Warwick) Register: https://shop.bham.ac.uk/conferences-and-events/college-of-arts-law/school-o… Full conference programme: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/documents/college-artslaw/music/events/2021/io… Promo video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6NS5Gsn88Q More info: muscon2021(a)contacts.bham.ac.uk Organising Committee: Christopher Haworth, Edward Spencer, Danielle Sofer This conference is funded by a UKRI AHRC Early Career Leadership Fellowship, Music and the Internet: Towards a Digital Sociology of Music

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VIDEO: Virtual Peering Series – Central Asia 2 – Серия виртуальных пирингов – Центральная Азия 2
by Joly MacFie 16 Aug '21

16 Aug '21

This was not streamed at the time, but the recording is well worth a view, in particular for Nishal Goburdhan's presentation of the ins and outs of IXPs, and also Michuki Mwangi's comments on community development. ISOC Live posted: "On 13 July 2021 the Internet Society, RIPE NCC and Euro-IX organised the second event of the Virtual Peering Series – Central Asia. This session focused on why Internet exchange points are important for the region, the benefits of establishing them, and h" [image: YouTube] <https://youtu.be/UIeaufD4Kuo>On *13 July 2021* the *Internet Society <https://InternetSociety.org>*, *RIPE NCC <https://www.ripe.net/>* and *Euro-IX <https://www.euro-ix.net/>* organised the *second event of the Virtual Peering Series – Central Asia <https://www.internetsociety.org/events/virtual-peering-series-central-asia/…>*. This session focused on why Internet exchange points are important for the region, the benefits of establishing them, and how to develop operator communities for a common purpose. *SPEAKERS* *Nishal Goburdhan*, Internet Infrastructure Analyst, Packet Clearing House (PCH) *Stavros Konstantaras*, Network Engineer, Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) *Talant Sultanov*, Co-Founder and Chair, Internet Society Kyrgyz Chapter *Michuki Mwangi*, Senior Director, Internet Technology and Development, Internet Society *MODERATOR* *Vahan Hovsepayan*, External Relations Officer (Caucasus and Central Asia), RIPE NCC *VIEW ON YOUTUBE https://youtu.be/UIeaufD4Kuo <https://youtu.be/UIeaufD4Kuo>* *TRANSCRIPT https://archive.org/download/vpsca-2/EN_vpsca2_TRANSCRIPT.pdf <https://archive.org/download/vpsca-2/EN_vpsca2_TRANSCRIPT.pdf>* [image: YouTube] <https://youtu.be/rbLq6Irad7o>*13 июля 2021* года *Internet Society <https://InternetSociety.org>*, *RIPE NCC <https://www.ripe.net/>* и *Euro-IX <https://www.euro-ix.net/>* организовали второе *мероприятие серии Virtual Peering Series - Центральная Азия <https://www.internetsociety.org/events/virtual-peering-series-central-asia/…>*. Эта сессия была посвящена тому, почему точки обмена трафиком Интернет важны для региона, преимуществах их создания и как развивать сообщества операторов для достижения общей цели. *ДИНАМИКИ* *Нишал Гобурдхан*, аналитик по инфраструктуре Интернета, Центр обмена пакетами (PCH) *Ставрос Константарас*, сетевой инженер, Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX) *Талант Султанов*, соучредитель и председатель кыргызского отделения Интернет-общества *Мичуки Мванги*, старший директор по Интернет-технологиям и развитию, Internet Society *МОДЕРАТОР* *Ваан Овсепаян*, специалист по внешним связям (Кавказ и Центральная Азия), RIPE NCC *ПОСМОТРЕТЬ НА YOUTUBE https://youtu.be/rbLq6Irad7o <https://youtu.be/rbLq6Irad7o>* *ТРАНСКРИПТ https://archive.org/download/vpsca-2/EN_vpsca2_TRANSCRIPT.pdf <https://archive.org/download/vpsca-2/EN_vpsca2_TRANSCRIPT.pdf>* *SLIDES / СЛАЙДЫ https://archive.org/download/vpsca-2/Why_Peering_Matters_SLIDES.pdf <https://archive.org/download/vpsca-2/Why_Peering_Matters_SLIDES.pdf>* *TWITTER #IXPs #Peering @InternetSociety @euroix @ripencc @AMS_IX @PCHglobal @ngoburdhan @talant @michukis @voland_a @tnurlyb @knmeynell* *ARCHIVE / АРХИВ https://archive.org/details/vpsca-2/ <https://archive.org/details/vpsca-2/>* *SPONSORS Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/> | FLEXOPTIX <https://www.flexoptix.net/> | AMS-IX <https://www.ams-ix.net/> | DEC-IX <https://www.de-cix.net/>* *Permalink* https://isoc.live/14461/ - -- -------------------------------------- Joly MacFie +12185659365 -------------------------------------- -

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Call for papers | Seminar on Information Disorders
by Ambika Tandon 16 Aug '21

16 Aug '21

Hello, The Centre for Internet and Society, India is announcing the launch of a seminar series to showcase research around digital rights and technology policy, with a focus on the Global South. The CIS seminar series will be a venue for researchers to share works-in-progress, exchange ideas, identify avenues for collaboration, and curate research. The theme for the first seminar in the series is Information Disorders. This includes research that proposes empirical, replicable methods of understanding the types, forms or nature of information disorder or research that attempts to understand regulatory approaches, the layers of production and the roles played by different agents in the spread of ‘fake news’. Accordingly, we invite submissions examining the relationship between digital technology and information disorder across a spectrum of fields and disciplines. Areas of interest include but are not limited to: 1. Information disorders during COVID-19 2. Effects of coordinated campaigns on marginalised communities 3. Journalism, the State, and the trust in media 4. Platform responsibility in information disorder 5. Information disorder in international law/constitutional/human rights law 6. Information disorder as a geopolitical tool 7. Sociopolitical and cultural factors in user engagement Key dates: Abstract Submission Deadline: August 25th Results of Abstract review: September 8th Full submissions (of draft papers): September 30th Seminar date: October 7th Please send in your abstracts to workshops(a)cis-india.org. Please contact aman(a)cis-india.org in case of any queries. Best, Ambika Tandon Senior researcher CIS

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FB statement on banning NYU researchers for scraping
by Joly MacFie 14 Aug '21

14 Aug '21

[if anyone already mentioned this, I missed it] https://about.fb.com/news/2021/08/research-cannot-be-the-justification-for-… Research Cannot Be the Justification for Compromising People’s Privacy August 3, 2021 By Mike Clark, Product Management Director For months, we’ve attempted to work with New York University to provide three of their researchers the precise access they’ve asked for in a privacy protected way. Today, we disabled the accounts, apps, Pages and platform access associated with NYU’s Ad Observatory Project and its operators after our repeated attempts to bring their research into compliance with our Terms. NYU’s Ad Observatory project studied political ads using unauthorized means to access and collect data from Facebook, in violation of our Terms of Service. We took these actions to stop unauthorized scraping and protect people’s privacy in line with our privacy program under the FTC Order. The researchers gathered data by creating a browser extension that was programmed to evade our detection systems and scrape data such as usernames, ads, links to user profiles and “Why am I seeing this ad?” information, some of which is not publicly-viewable on Facebook. The extension also collected data about Facebook users who did not install it or consent to the collection. The researchers had previously archived this information in a now offline, publicly-available database. We offer researchers <https://research.fb.com/> a number of privacy-protective methods <https://about.fb.com/news/2021/01/increasing-transparency-around-us-2020-el…> to collect and analyze data. We welcome research that holds us accountable, and doesn’t compromise the security of our platform or the privacy of the people who use it. That’s why we created tools like the Ad Library and launched initiatives like Data for Good <https://dataforgood.fb.com/> and Facebook Open Research & Transparency (FORT <https://fort.fb.com/>) — to provide privacy-protected APIs and data sets for the academic community. We told the researchers a year ago, in summer of 2020, that their Ad Observatory extension would violate our Terms even before they launched the tool. In October, we sent them a formal letter notifying them of the violation of our Terms of Service and granted them 45 days to comply with our request to stop scraping data from our website. The deadline ended on November 30, long after Election Day. We continued to engage with the researchers on addressing our privacy concerns and offered them ways to obtain data that did not violate our Terms. Earlier this year, we invited researchers, including the ones from NYU, to safely access US 2020 Elections ad targeting data <https://research.fb.com/blog/2021/02/introducing-new-election-related-ad-da…> through FORT’s Researcher Platform. This offered the Ad Observatory researchers a more comprehensive data set than the one they created by scraping data on Facebook. The researchers had the opportunity to use the data set, which is designed to be privacy-protective, instead of relying on scraping, but they declined. We made it clear in a series of posts <https://about.fb.com/news/2021/04/how-we-combat-scraping/> earlier this year that we take unauthorized data scraping seriously, and when we find instances of scraping we investigate and take action to protect our platform. While the Ad Observatory project may be well-intentioned, the ongoing and continued violations of protections against scraping cannot be ignored and should be remediated. Collecting data via scraping is an industry-wide problem that jeopardizes people’s privacy, and we’ve been clear about our public position <https://about.fb.com/news/2021/04/how-we-combat-scraping/> on this as recently as April. The researchers knowingly violated our Terms against scraping — which we went to great lengths to explain to them over the past year. Today’s action doesn’t change our commitment to providing more transparency <https://about.fb.com/news/2021/01/increasing-transparency-around-us-2020-el…> around ads on Facebook or our ongoing collaborations with academia. We’ll continue to provide ways for responsible researchers to conduct studies that are in the public interest while protecting the security of our platform and the privacy of people who use it. -- -------------------------------------- Joly MacFie +12185659365 -------------------------------------- -

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Call-for-Papers Special Issue "Explainable User Models" (Multimodal Technologies and Interaction Journal)
by Oana Inel 13 Aug '21

13 Aug '21

— Apologies for cross-posting — Special Issue "Explainable User Models" A special issue of Multimodal Technologies and Interaction<https://www.mdpi.com/journal/mti> (ISSN 2414-4088). Important Dates & Facts: Abstract/title submission: ideally until November 5, 2021 Manuscripts due by: February 20, 2022 Notification to authors: March 15, 2022 Website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/mti/special_issues/Explainable_User_Models Special Issue Information This special issue addresses research on Explainable User Models. As AI systems’ actions and decisions will significantly affect their users, it is important to be able to understand how an AI system represents its users. It is a well-known hurdle that many AI algorithms behave largely as black boxes. One key aim of explainability is, therefore, to make the inner workings of AI systems more accessible and transparent. Such explanations can be helpful in the case when the system uses information about the user to develop a working representation of the user, and then uses this representation to adjust or inform system behavior. E.g., an educational system could detect whether students have a more internal or external locus of control, a music recommender system could adapt the music it is playing to the current mood of a user, or an aviation system could detect the visual memory capacity of its pilots. However, when adapting to such user models it is crucial that these models are accurately detected. Furthermore, for such explanations to be useful, they need to be able to explain or justify their representations of users in a human-understandable way. This creates a necessity for techniques that will create models for the automatic generation of satisfactory explanations intelligible for human users interacting with the system. The scope of the special issue includes but is not limited to: Detection and Modelling • Novel ways of Modeling User Preferences • Types of information to model (Knowledge, Personality, Cognitive differences, etc.) • Distinguishing between stationary versus transient user models (e.g., Personality vs Mood) • Context modeling (e.g., at work versus at home, lean in versus lean out activities) • User models from heterogeneous sources (e.g., behavior, ratings, and reviews) • Enrichment and Crowdsourcing for Explainable User Models Ethics • Detection of sensitive or rarely reported attributes (e.g., gender, race, sexial orientation) • Implicit user modeling versus explicit user modeling (e.g., questionnaires versus inference from behavior) • User modeling for self actualization (e.g., user modeling to improve dietary or news consumption habits) Human understandability • Metrics and methodologies for evaluating fitness for the purpose of explanations • Balancing completeness and understandability for complex user models • Explanations to mitigate human biases (e.g., confirmation bias, anchoring) • Effect of user model explanation on subsequent user interaction (e.g., simulations, and novel evaluation methodologies) Effectiveness • Analysis or comparison of context of use of explanation (e.g., risk, time pressure, error tolerance) • Analysis of context of use of system (e.g., decision support, prediction) • Analysis or comparison of effect of explaining in specific domains (e.g., education, health, recruitment, security) Adaptive presentation of the explanations • For different types of user • Interactive explanations • Investigation of which presentational aspects are beneficial to tailor in the explanation (e.g., level of detail, terminology, modality text or graphics, level of interaction) Prof. Dr. Nava Tintarev Ms. Oana Inel Guest Editors

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Outside Looking In - new CDT report on E2EE and content moderation
by Dhanaraj Thakur 12 Aug '21

12 Aug '21

Hi everyone, I'm excited to announce a new CDT research report launched today, /Outside Looking In: Approaches to Content Moderation in End-to-End Encrypted Systems/ <https://cdt.org/insights/report-outside-looking-in-approaches-to-content-mo…>. The report describes what end-to-end encryption (E2EE) means and what we should expect when a provider claims their service is E2EE. It also examines the viability of several current technical proposals that purport to introduce some form of content moderation (specifically, detection of unwanted content), while still providing an E2EE service. The report identifies two methods -- user reporting and metadata analysis -- that enable detection of unwanted or abusive content and still preserve E2EE. It also identifies several methods that claim to maintain E2EE but in reality do not, and other methods that require additional research. A more detailed summary of the report is available in this blog post <https://cdt.org/insights/report-outside-looking-in-approaches-to-content-mo…>. The issues discussed in /Outside Looking In/ are particularly timely given Apple’s recent announcement <https://cdt.org/press/cdt-apples-changes-to-messaging-and-photo-services-th…> of changes to its Messages and iCloud Photos services, which has put a spotlight on E2EE and how to moderate content on E2EE services. Apple has designed new features intended to protect children online, and while this is a laudable and important goal, Apple’s approach will undermine encryption and the security it provides for all users. You can read more about CDT’s concerns about Apple’s announcement in this blog post <https://cdt.org/insights/what-could-go-wrong-apples-misguided-plans-to-gut-…>. Feel free to share and I hope this report will be a useful resource for you. We’d greatly appreciate any feedback you may have as well. take care, Dhanaraj -- *Dhanaraj Thakur* (he/him) | Research Director Center for Democracy & Technology |*cdt.org <https://cdt.org/>* *E:* dthakur(a)cdt.org <mailto:dthakur@cdt.org> | *P:* +1 202 407 8849 | @thakurdhanaraj

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[Position available] AI & Genomics Futures Researcher, Ada Lovelace Institute
by Andrew Strait 12 Aug '21

12 Aug '21

Hi everyone, The Ada Lovelace Institute is hiring for a researcher skilled in futures methodologies to lead a 24-month project with the Nuffield Council on Bioethics that looks at the legal, policy, and ethical implications of the intersection of AI and genomics technologies. More information on the role can be found below: https://www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/job/researcher-ai-genomics-futures/ More information on the project can be found here: https://www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/news/new-joint-project-nuffield-counci… Applications close on 11:59 BST, Weds 25 August 2021. -- Andrew Strait

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New book - Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance
by Tyne Daile 12 Aug '21

12 Aug '21

Dear all, I'm happy to let you know that my new book has just been published with Routledge. *Lyric Eye: The Poetics of Twentieth-Century Surveillance*: https://www.routledge.com/Lyric-Eye-The-Poetics-of-Twentieth-Century-Survei… The book presents an original, interdisciplinary approach to surveillance studies, as read through the lens of C20th writers who were surveilled by the FBI. It concludes with a chapter on dataveillance and considers the extent to which Humanities fields offer new and insightful ways of addressing the pressing ethical challenges of automated surveillance. *Lyric Eye* is available in hardback, paperback and eBook. Please let me know if you (or someone you know) may be interested in reviewing it. All the best, Tyne _____ *Dr Tyne Daile Sumner **ARC Postdoctoral Research Associate* The School of Culture and Communication Faculty of Arts | The University of Melbourne twitter.com/tynedaile | www.tynedaile.com <http://tynedaile.com/> ARC Discovery Project: Literature and the Face: A Critical History <https://face.hypotheses.org/> ARC LIEF Project: The Australian Cultural Data Engine (ACD-E) <https://dataportal.arc.gov.au/NCGP/Web/Grant/Grant/LE210100021>

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CFP: Addressing Challenges and Opportunities in Online Extremism Research: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (CSCW 2021)
by kiran gvr 11 Aug '21

11 Aug '21

Addressing Challenges and Opportunities in Online Extremism Research: An Interdisciplinary Perspective October 23-24, 2021 Co-organized along CSCW 2021 Conference https://sites.google.com/view/cscw21extremismworkshop/home Recent political and cultural upheavals around the globe highlight the importance of studying extremism in online spaces. The CSCW community has shown growing interest in exploring the information and influence operations, use of language and multimedia and finance structures in online extremism movements. The goal of this workshop is to broaden the current research by considering multi-disciplinary and cross-cultural aspects of online extremism research. This workshop brings together international researchers to discuss challenges and new opportunities to help (1) understand the representativeness and validity of the data used for studying extremism (2) uncover nuances in extremism research across countries and cultures (3) build norms for platform governance and policies (4) develop critical perspectives on extremism studies addressing questions such as research ethics and bias (5) promoting research efforts to aid victims of the extremism (6) leverage extremism research for aiding the recovery and social support for populations involved in online extremism. Workshop Goals: (1) Facilitate networking, connections, and community identity of researchers from multiple disciplines such as social psychology, computer science, criminology, epidemiology, social justice studying online extremism. (2) Discuss and propose ideas relevant to the five themes of the workshop. (3) Encourage future interdisciplinary collaborations on the ideas generated during the workshop Topics of interest: In this workshop, we aim to reach beyond the concepts of online incivility, toxicity, hate speech, harassment, or online harm and also consider ideologically driven extremism based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, caste, and political affiliation. As such, we invite ideas researching both, online harms, hate speech, and harassment relevant to ideological extremism and the broader level online ecosystem of ideological extremism. Keeping in mind the socio-political complexity of ideological extremism, this workshop focuses on bringing together researchers from diverse countries and disciplines such as computational social science, HCI, criminology, social psychology, epidemiology, and political science to facilitate further dialogue on six main themes of the workshop: — Extremism Studies and Data — Extremism across Cultures — Extremism and Governance — Extremism Research Ethics — Aiding Victims of Extremism — Recovery from Online Extremism Submission guidelines: - Authors can submit a 2-6 pages position paper or a 300 word abstract - The accepted papers/abstracts will be hosted on the website upon acceptance - Position papers will be invited for presentations or lightning talks during the workshop - Both position papers and abstracts should be able to identify at least one or more themes outlined on the website. *- Submissions are being accepted through this google form: https://forms.gle/9cxLcoF5paCk1w9MA <https://forms.gle/9cxLcoF5paCk1w9MA>* Important dates: - Paper submission deadline: 10th September 2021 - Acceptance notifications: 17th September, 2021 Organizing committee: - Shruti Phadke, University of Washington - Jessie Seiler, University of Washington - Tanushree Mitra, University of Washington - Kiran Garimella, MIT - Matthew Costello, Clemson University - James Hawdon, Virginia Tech Contact: phadke(a)uw.edu We look forward to seeing you at the workshop! Sincerely, Kiran Garimella

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