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Registration now open for 2024 Policy & Internet Conference
by Jonathon Hutchinson 15 Sep '24

15 Sep '24

Dear Colleagues, **with apologies for cross posting** The program has been finalised for the 2024 Policy & Internet Conference, this year to be held at the University of Sydney October 2-4: https://internet-policy-meco.sydney.edu.au/2024/09/policy-internet-conferen… Registration is now open. Please note we are in hybrid mode for the entire conference, and you can register for either mode: https://pay.sydney.edu.au/V96/sessiontimeout We hope to see you in Sydney later this year. Regards, The Policy & Internet Organisers. DR JONATHON HUTCHINSON Chair of Discipline, Media and Communication President of Australian and Aotearoa New Zealand Communication Association (AANZCA) Editor-in-Chief, Policy & Internet Journal [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/19442866] Associate Investigator for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making + Society THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY Rm N233, John Woolley Building (A20) | The University of Sydney | NSW | 2006 T +61 2 9351 2821 | F +61 2 9351 2434 E jonathon.hutchinson(a)sydney.edu.au<mailto:jonathon.hutchinson@sydney.edu.au> | W sydney.edu.au<http://sydney.edu.au> | W jonathonhutchinson.com.au<http://www.jonathonhutchinson.com.au/> CRICOS 00026A This email plus any attachments to it are confidential. Any unauthorised use is strictly prohibited. If you receive this email in error, please delete it and any attachments.

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Discover Haitian Legislation on ICT with Our New Book
by Jameson Pierre-Louis 15 Sep '24

15 Sep '24

Hello everyone, Are you a digital professional in Haiti? An ICT entrepreneur? A law student interested in the legal challenges of the digital world? Then this book is for you! We are excited to announce the release of our new book: "Haitian Legislation Applicable to Information and Communication Technologies."This comprehensive and up-to-date guide will allow you to: Master the legal framework of digital activities in Haiti Understand the rights and obligations of industry players Identify the challenges and opportunities related to the use of ICT Stay informed of the latest developments in legislationTo order your copy, cli here : https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1598881 Don't hesitate to share this information with your network! Sincerely, Jameson Pierre-Louis

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TrustDefender Update
by Shulman, Stu 14 Sep '24

14 Sep '24

TrustDefender Update The free information literacy and digital citizenship platform TrustDefender is live. It is available to academics for both teaching and research purposes. https://TrustDefender.net We have benefited from the input of a diverse and still growing advisory board: https://trustdefender.net/advisory-board I have loaded sample datasets we are using to adapt these tools to education and research problems in the trust domain. You are invited to request a free account and to access samples of these data. In TrustDefender, users collaborate on a single copy of the data through a "peer" network. This is not a resource for downloading copies of the data. It is a web-based collaboration toolkit originally built with NSF-funding to improve the accuracy, reliability, and workflow in crowd source systems for recording human observations. Some of the new sample datasets include: - Every Tweet (132,732) with a link to RT (Russia Today) purporting to be from a user in the United States or Canada between January 1 and September 8, 2024. - Every Tweet (70,031) with a link to GlobalResearch.ca purporting to be from a user in the United States or Canada between September 1, 2023 and September 11, 2024. - A convenience sample (4,015) of Tweets by political users who all employ an emoji as the first character of their Twitter bio. This data is very cool visually and provocative when you get into the underlying theory of communication. Please contact me if you are an academic interested in learning more about this project. You do not need to use it in a class, though we are hoping many will assign it as homework. The barriers to entry as well as the time for onboarding and training an entire class have never been lower. Everything is browser-based with a GUI. Tweets are displayed in the live Twitter display. Deleted and suspended Tweets are not displayed and the check is in realtime. A reminder, you can request a new custom Twitter dataset from the last 12 months or load your own data from any source. Anything with text in one or more columns and metadata in the other columns in a spreadsheet can be loaded to TrustDefender. https://tinyurl.com/uploadingspreadsheets Finally, there is no commercial upsell at the end. This is just what it looks like when you have an unshakeable belief in the efficacy of your 17-year old invention. It is perfectly analogous to raising a beloved child. So the door is, as ever, open. Come on in and help me to make TrustDefender better. The upcoming elections in the United States and Canada "will be wild" and the question of who to trust is highly salient. Students need a set of information literacy skills to navigate these challenges. ~Stu -- Dr. Stuart W. Shulman Founder and CEO, Texifter Editor Emeritus, Journal of Information Technology & Politics https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Stuart-Shulman

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WEBCAST SEP 19 – Book Launch: Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy
by Joly MacFie 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Put this one in your calendar! https://calndr.link/event/bZvURwjyD2 On Thursday September 19 2024, at 12:30-17:30 EDT (16:30-21:30 UTC) Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, The University of Alabama School of Law, The University of Minnesota Law School, and Columbia Law School present a book launch 'Disinformation, Mis… [image: isoc live] <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=b39b6fd8cb89151ef30038d3…>On *Thursday September 19 2024*, at *12:30-17:30 EDT* (16:30-21:30 UTC) *Columbia Global Freedom of Expression <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=00c81c8e31a18d81d049b3c7…>*, *The University of Alabama School of Law <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=4a7cfda3e7432534085d864e…>*, The *University of Minnesota Law School <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=1c4a61bce10d32e09049dcff…>*, and *Columbia Law School <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=3a2255ebcd98a8a27f1e26da…>* present a book launch '*Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=e6b1b13fa1714df197670b7e…>*' at Columbia University in NYC. As the US presidential election approaches and half of the world’s population heads to the polls in this “super-election year” of 2024, Cambridge University Press has published '*Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy: Legal Approaches in Comparative Context*' <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=b283d5629afb56b23b27bae6…>, in which legal scholars from around the world explore the global threat to democracy posed by false information through a comparative legal analysis. This hybrid event gathers co-editors, contributors, and other special guests at three thematic sessions, examining solutions from the perspectives of government regulation, media self-regulation, and the role of civil society. (ALL TIMES EDT = UTC-4) *12:30 – 1:45pm Framing the Problem* *Ron Krotosynski*, Co-editor / John S. Stone Chair, Director of Faculty Research and Professor of Law at the University of Alabama School of Law *Andras Koltay*, Co-editor / Research Professor, University of Public Service (Budapest) / Professor of Law, Pázmány Péter Catholic University (Budapest) *Andie Tucher*, H. Gordon Garbedian Professor of Journalism and Director of the Communications Ph. D. Program, Columbia Journalism School Moderator: *David Pozen*, Charles Keller Beekman Professor of Law, Columbia Law School. *2:00 – 3:30pm National and transnational regulatory approaches* *Artur Pericles Lima Monteiro*, Resident Fellow, Information Society Project, Yale Law School *Bernát Török*, Director, Institute of the Information Society, Ludovika University of Public Service (Budapest) *Ahran Park*, Associate Professor, School of Media & Communication, Korea University, South Korea Moderator: *Jeremy Kessler*, Stanley H. Fuld Professor of Law, Columbia Law School *3:45 – 5:00pm Social groups and institutions, outside government* *Charlotte Garden*, Co-editor, Julius E. Davis Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota *Anya Schiffrin*, Director of the Technology, Media, and Communications specialization, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University *Katie Fallow*, Senior Counsel, Knight First Amendment Institute, Columbia University Moderator: *Costanza Sciubba Caniglia*, Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead, Wikimedia Foundation Livestream provided by the *Internet Society U.S .New York Chapter <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=a1c8814f73906bb6f6e465e0…>* *LIVESTREAM https://livestream.com/internetsociety/cgfoe-disinfo <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=3bce2bc5c73f6a36f3b7a125…>* *PARTICIPATE VIA ZOOM https://bit.ly/3zr58YD <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=20e51e35a90857d584bfd31b…>* *TWITTER #disinformation #misinformation #democracy <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=b36ad42894c9c69cd1721da2…> @ColumbiaGFoE @UofMNLawSchool @UALawSchool @ColumbiaLaw @knightcolumbia @columbiajourn* *,* *MASTODON #disinformation <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=e8433d4e296bbd5deed1f884…>* *SIMULCASTS* *https://twitter.com/ISOC_Live <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=589b681a06fa2aa116abfe92…>* *https://www.twitch.tv/isoclive <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=b49e6de4d71972af45f0579d…>* *https://www.facebook.com/liveisoc/ <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=c012d8da31b31515f95c4990…>* *ARCHIVE* *https://archive.org/details/cgfoe-disinfo <http://isoc.live?action=user_content_redirect&uuid=c392cddc4ae9c594290d9143…>* -- -------------------------------------- Joly MacFie +12185659365 -------------------------------------- -

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Open Call: Join the Open Social Incubator
by Nathan Schneider 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

AOIR friends, I know there are some folks doing work around the fediverse and similar spaces here—please spread the word about this opportunity from my lab to be paid to build community! https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/2024/09/11/open-call-join-open-social-i… Open Call: Join the Open Social Incubator Apply here by October 4<https://cloud.medlab.host/apps/forms/s/z7AcZWdwy76Qgzmtf3WMe6if> Do the online communities and groups that you participate in use digital tools that truly serve your values? Do you want to break free from the confines of corporate platforms, but feel stuck by the limits of your own technical know-how? Social media has long been dominated by companies that operate through surveillance, censorship, and the whims of a few people in charge. Yet different possibilities are emerging: in recent years, a new crop of social networks has emerged, based on open-source software and open protocols—including Mastodon, Matrix, Bluesky and Nostr. However, too often, would-be users of these tools are turned off by the apparent requirement of specialized technical skills. We want to help lower the barrier for skilled community-builders to take advantage of open social media. We’re looking for people with an existing track record of building community (online or off!) who want to learn about social media tools that are truly user owned and governed. The Media Economies Design Lab<https://www.colorado.edu/lab/medlab/> at the University of Colorado Boulder is launching a 5-month process of mentorship and peer-to-peer learning, empowering veteran community builders to adopt emerging open social networks. We’ll help participants better understand the opportunities and challenges unique to these new kinds of networks. Together, we will strive to create a space where community builders can deepen their technical knowledge and better understand how to utilize technologies that align with their values. Participants will meet as a full group monthly and receive ongoing, 1:1 project-specific technical support as they seed and grow new communities using open social media tools of their choosing. Participation is fully remote and all sessions will be conducted in English. All participants should commit to making strides toward community-building in open social media by the end of the program. Completion of the full program, from November 2024 to April 2025, will be compensated with a stipend of $3,500 USD. We encourage applications from individuals or teams who wish to build or are presently embedded in communities that could benefit from improved access to open-source, self-owned tech tools, especially:\ * Solidarity economy and bio-regional sustainability projects * Journalists, newsrooms, and public-interest media * Activist and social-change communities * Cross-border networks * Artists and arts organizations * Communities at risk of being shut out of proprietary infrastructure Anyone can apply, regardless of institutional affiliation. No prior technical experience is expected or required—just a desire to learn. Apply via this form<https://cloud.medlab.host/apps/forms/s/z7AcZWdwy76Qgzmtf3WMe6if> by October 4, 2024. The Open Social Incubator is organized by the Media Economies Design Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, made possible by generous gifts from Colorado ReWild and Mask Network Academy. -- Nathan Schneider Assistant Professor, Media Studies University of Colorado Boulder

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Talk Oct 4 - Digitizing Mental Health Work with Prof. Pablo J. Boczkowski [Platforms & Labour Speaker Series]
by Rafael Do Nascimento Grohmann 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Dear AoIR community, If you around Toronto, please join us! We are excited to announce the second speaker of Platforms & Labour Speaker Series on October 4 at UofT: Prof. Pablo J. Boczkowski<https://communication.northwestern.edu/faculty/pablo-boczkowski.html> is Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. He is Founder and Director of the Center for Latinx Digital Media. His research program examines the dynamics of digital culture from a comparative perspective. He is the author of six books, four edited volumes, and more than sixty journal articles. Digitizing Mental Health Work Date/Time: October 4, free lunch 12-1pm, talk 1-3pm Location: Claude Bissell Building, 140 St. George Street, The Learning Hub (BL404, 4th Floor), University of Toronto Attendance Mode: In-Person Please register before Sept 30 for lunch: https://forms.office.com/r/yXcNtYHkAP Description: For over a century, the practice of the “psy” professions—such as psychiatry, clinical psychology, and social work, among others—primarily consisted of conversations during in-person sessions and the occasional phone call between sessions. Furthermore, it was rare that mediated information became a topic of conversation during sessions. This communication and technology matrix was tied to longstanding conceptual and procedural models, and to distinct notions of personhood and their place in modernity. But over the past decade it has gone through a fundamental shift—and one that has intensified since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Sessions increasingly take place on the screen and/or on the phone. Furthermore, patients communicate with professionals by text and email between sessions, thus extending the frequency of therapeutic exchanges and the workload. They also share audio, photo, and video files to “show rather than tell” about their predicament. Moreover, professionals and patients can—and usually do—know more about each other than before by resorting to search and social media technologies. Finally, the handling of content and interactions over smartphones, social media, and various apps has become a recurrent topic of conversation within sessions. Taken together, these transformations have destabilized the previously dominant matrix, and made visible dynamics that bind communication and technology with transformations in knowledge, culture, and society. In this talk I will draw from an interview-based ethnographic study with mental health professionals (N= 100) in the Greater Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to examine how they use communication technology in their work practices. The analysis will show that digitizing mental health work is tied to major transformations in broader issues of inequality, sociality, and personhood in contemporary life. The talk is hosted by Prof. David Nieborg. The event is open to all students, faculty, and staff. Feel free to spread the word. Co-Sponsored by: Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab (P-WILL)<https://pwill.eu/>, FLOURISH<https://flourishcollective.ca/>, Department of Arts, Culture and Media/UTSC and DigiLabour<https://digilabour.com.br/> This is the second event of Platforms & Labour speaker series, coordinated by Professors Rafael Grohmann and David Nieborg. Save the dates for upcoming events: November 19: Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI, with Mark Graham, James Muldoon and Callum Cant. best, Rafael -- dr. Rafael Grohmann Assistant Professor of Media Studies Department of Arts, Culture and Media<https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/acm/rafael-grohmann> Faculty of Information<https://ischool.utoronto.ca/profile/rafael-grohmann/> University of Toronto 2024-2025 Faculty Fellow, Queer and Trans Research Lab, Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies, University of Toronto<http://qtrl%20Cohort%202024-25%20–%20Mark%20S.%20Bonham%20Centre%20for%20Se…> Leader, DigiLabour<https://digilabour.com.br/> Founding Editor, Platforms & Society<https://journals.sagepub.com/home/PNS> Principal Investigator, Worker-Owned Intersectional Platforms (WOIP)<https://digilabour.com.br/worker-owned-intersectional-platforms-woip/> Researcher, Fairwork<https://fair.work/> <https://fair.work/> International Experts Coordinator, Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab<https://pwill.eu/>

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Call for Papers: Velvet Light Trap 96, Continuity and Change in Media Representation
by CLARE O'GARA 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Hello all! We hope you will consider submitting to issue 96 of the Velvet Light Trap, which calls for scholarship that explores continuity and change in media representation. We very much welcome work that considers digital/internet media and culture, including (but not limited to): * Methods for researching representational shifts and continuities (close readings, reception studies, archival methods, platform and digital methods, etc.) * How increased attention to media representation has grown as a cultural, economic, and political value * How representative changes within transmedia properties, franchises, adaptations, or remakes been received and/or initiated by shifting media industry logics * How fans and audiences resisted, advocated for, and responded to media representation shifts, discourses, or ideologies * Critical perspectives on misrepresentations, queering, and analysis beyond “positive” or “negative” representation binaries * How time, place, region, and other geo-temporal sites are represented in media (including depictions of the past, future, or atemporal locations) * How media circulation practices and paratexts influence the production and reception of media representations We are also accepting open call submissions. The Velvet Light Trap is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by University of Texas Press and collectively edited by graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison And University of Texas - Austin. More information on the press can be found here: https://utpress.utexas.edu/journals/the-velvet-light-trap/ Extended deadline: October 18, 2024 Link to full CFP:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pWZgpsyo7GiVghdfifQGr9gNBN6g8ZM73gY… We look forward to your submissions! Clare O'Gara (he/she/they) PhD Student, University of Wisconsin — Madison UT Press Liason, Velvet Light Trap Issue 96 Department of Communication Arts, Media and Cultural Studies

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Call for ICA 2025 panelists: Corporate Power Beyond Media Ownership Concentration
by Popiel, Pawel 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Apologies for cross-posting. I’m co-organizing a panel for ICA 2025 with Hendrik Theine and Sydney Forde that aims to trace forms of media (including but not limited to traditional media and telecom, platforms, AI companies, etc.) corporate power beyond ownership concentration. Please see the below call for details: Systemic political economic and technological transformations of our communication systems (Cohen, 2019) have reinvigorated scholarly attention to issues of media property and ownership (e.g., Birkinbine & Gómez, 2020; Fuchs, 2024; Just et al., 2024; Srnicek, 2018; Theine & Sevignani, 2024; Van Der Vlist et al., 2024). For instance, research initiatives like the Global Media and Internet Concentration Project<https://gmicp.org/> (GMICP) aim to rigorously document dynamically changing media markets, innovate methodologically, obtain often difficult-to-access market data, and inform policy. By linking ownership concentration to political, economic, and institutional power, such inquiries engage foundational questions about the role of media and communication in democratic societies, including the persistent and historical tensions between democratic governance and powerful private capital (e.g., Baker, 2007). This call embraces these scholarly efforts and plans to build on them by inviting scholars to chart new directions for thinking about corporate media power as a political economic phenomenon beyond ownership concentration. Our rationale is twofold. First, much of the scholarly attention coincides with international policy efforts to reform and more aggressively enforce competition laws to disperse concentrated corporate power over media and communication systems. These initiatives represent a crucial corrective to underenforcement and have yielded high profile legal decisions (e.g., United States v. Google LLC (2020); India’s CCI fine on Google for anti-competitive payment app practices) and new laws (e.g., EU’s DMA). However, scholarly and policy attention to market ownership concentration typically elicits calls for more competition (e.g., break-ups, interoperability), which may restructure markets but not upend the commercial, corporate business models that constitute many media systems purporting to fulfill, but in fact undermining their democratic functions (Birkinbine & Gómez, 2020; Phillips & Mazzoli, 2022; Pickard, 2020). Second, focusing on concentration often singles out dominant market players over smaller (though often still quite large) corporations that deploy various strategies to maintain and grow their market positions and engage in anti-democratic practices (e.g., X, Palantir). Likewise, analyses into ownership concentration can miss interdependencies between market players, especially as modern media and tech companies extend vertically and horizontally, and sometimes leverage power from adjacent or downstream markets in those where they lack dominance (Birkinbine & Gómez, 2020). Modern “media” corporations deploy a range of strategies to accumulate and maintain power. For instance, companies like ByteDance strategically restructure themselves, engaging in regulatory arbitrage to take advantage of lax regulations in various geographic markets (Li, 2024). In the AI context, corporations pursue strategies like dual class voting shares, where minority holders retain shares with larger voting power than majority owners; investing massive venture capital to establish an AI startup pipeline that feeds into their AI products and services; and establishing dominance over cloud and data infrastructure to establish control in other sectors (Rikap, 2024). This panel seeks to expand our critique of both new and historical corporate strategies of power accumulation and to deepen our understanding of contemporary media and tech corporations, including by attending to ownership structures that blur familiar categories and to interdependencies between corporate actors (e.g., Sevignani & Theine, 2024). Panel contributions might examine the following topics: * Novel or retooled corporate strategies to maintain advantages in any sector where powerful media organizations operate (e.g., search, streaming, news, digital shopping), including the use of legal, political, and economic tactics and tools * Efforts to influence policy to maintain media power or prevent efforts to discipline it (e.g., regulatory arbitrage, self-restructuring, lobbying) * Exercise of corporate control over media and tech labor to maintain market dominance or to prevent labor mobility and/or stake in corporate governance * Strategies to establish control of data production and collection, processing and analytics, ownership, and transfer deployed to create chokepoints and dependencies in datafied media markets * Policy, theory-based, activist, and other approaches that tackle the complexities of corporate political economic power beyond break-ups (e.g., restructuring business models, nationalization, etc.) * Contemporary and historical case studies of media and tech companies leveraging significant power over other market players without necessarily having a dominant market position (or leveraging a dominant position in an adjacent, but separate market) This is not an exhaustive list. We are interested in both empirical case studies as well as conceptual pieces; we impose no methodological, epistemological, or geographic restrictions; we are open to and welcome a range of theoretical approaches; and we will prioritize submissions that tackle novel and understudied cases. If you are interested, please fill out <https://forms.gle/M52syEzPY3kuV1kRA> this submission form<https://forms.gle/M52syEzPY3kuV1kRA> and include a brief (200 words max) description of your paper, including your theoretical / methodological approach, and how it contributes to the panel themes. Submissions will be accepted until October 7, 2024. Organizers * Pawel Popiel (pawel.popiel(a)wsu.edu) - Assistant Professor, Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University * Hendrik Theine (hendrik.theine(a)wu.ac.at) - Assistant Professor, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business * Sydney Forde (slf5652(a)psu.edu) - Doctoral Candidate, Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, Penn State University References Baker, C. E. (2007). Media concentration and democracy: Why ownership matters. Cambridge University Press. Birkinbine, B. J., & Gómez, R. (2020). New Methods for Mapping Media Concentration: Network analysis of joint ventures among firms. Media, Culture & Society, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163443720902907 Cohen, J. E. (2019). Between Truth and Power: The legal constructions of informational capitalism. Oxford University Press. Fuchs, C. (2024). Critical Theory Foundations of Digital Capitalism: A Critical Political Economy Perspective. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 22(1), 148–196. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v22i1.1454 Just, N., Birrer, A., & He, D. (2024). Media power and ownership concentration. In M. Puppis, R. Mansell, & H. Van Den Bulck (Eds.), Handbook of Media and Communication Governance (pp. 458–471). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800887206.00046 Li, L. (2024). The specter of global ByteDance: Platforms, regulatory arbitrage, and politics. Information, Communication & Society, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2024.2352634 Phillips, A., & Mazzoli, E. M. (2022). Minimizing Data- Driven Targeting and Providing a Public Search Alternative. In M. Moore & D. Tambini (Eds.), Regulating Big Tech: Policy responses to digital dominance (pp. 110–126). Oxford University Press. Pickard, V. (2020). Restructuring Democratic Infrastructures: A Policy Approach to the Journalism Crisis. Digital Journalism, 8(6), 704–719. https://doi.org/10.1080/21670811.2020.1733433 Rikap, C. (2024, May 15). Dynamics of Corporate Governance Beyond Ownership in AI. Common Wealth. https://www.common-wealth.org/publications/dynamics-of-corporate-governance… Sevignani, S., & Theine, H. (2024). Media property: Mapping the field and future trajectories in the digital age. European Journal of Communication, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231241268159 Srnicek, N. (2018). Platform Monopolies and the Political Economy of AI. In J. McDonnell (Ed.), Economics for the many. Verso. Theine, H., & Sevignani, S. (2024). Introduction to the special issue: Media transformation and the challenge of property. European Journal of Communication, 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/02673231241274347 Van Der Vlist, F., Helmond, A., & Ferrari, F. (2024). Big AI: Cloud infrastructure dependence and the industrialisation of artificial intelligence. Big Data & Society, 11(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517241232630 Pawel Popiel, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Journalism and Media Production The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University Affiliate, Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP), UNC Chapel Hill Affiliate, Media, Inequality and Change (MIC) Center, University of Pennsylvania Website<https://pawelpopiel.com/> | Google Scholar<https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CW3X1pcAAAAJ&hl=en> | Faculty Profile<https://murrow.wsu.edu/about-the-college/contact-connect/faculty-and-staff-…>

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New article -- How to Spark Joy: Strategies of Depoliticization in Platform’s Corporate Social Initiatives
by Rebecca Scharlach 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Dear AoIR community, I just wanted to share my first solo article with you. In this (open access) paper, published in Social Media + Society, I explore how platforms engage in corporate public relations campaigns – soft forms of governance – to negotiate social and political responsibilities. It’s called How to Spark Joy: Strategies of Depoliticization in Platform’s Corporate Social Initiatives. Social Media + Society, 10(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241277601 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20563051241277601 How to Spark Joy: Strategies of Depoliticization in Platform’s Corporate Social Initiatives - Rebecca Scharlach, 2024 journals.sagepub.com A little summary: Social media companies emphasize aspirations to do good yet have received significant and sustained international scrutiny for bad conduct. In response to these allegations, corporations have professed their commitment to ethical standards, declared their dedication to sound governance, and taken steps toward legal and social responsibilities. Although corporate PR campaigns may not show up on the top of users’ FYP, they provide an important tool for platforms to mediate their relationships with different stakeholders, as well as a rich site for researchers to identify the values platforms actively promote. In this article, I explore how the corporation behind TikTok, ByteDance, utilizes symbolic forms of power associated with values to navigate tensions associated with political and societal responsibilities. I bring together two bodies of literature: corporate social responsibility and platforms’ public communication strategies. I also introduce the concept of depoliticization by platforms, defined as strategies to downplay and distance a company from conflicts associated with struggles over power. Through a qualitative analysis of the values promoted in the social initiative TikTok for Good, I show how ByteDance promotes messages that amplify positivity, minimize negativity, and focus on individual well-being, while consistently assigning responsibility to other actors. Together, these strategies allow TikTok to symbolically empower users while maintaining control. This study highlights platform companies’ soft forms of governance and demonstrates how the analysis of platform values allows researchers to cut through the strategic vagueness of claims to do good. -------- I hope the paper sparks interest for some of you, and I’d be very happy to hear your thoughts, questions, concerns, or ideas. Wishing all of you a lovely weekend, Rebecca -- Kind regards, Rebecca Scharlach (she/her) Doctoral Researcher | ERC Project ‘DigitalValues <https://digitalvalues.huji.ac.il/>’ PhD Candidate Department of Communication and Journalism The Hebrew University of Jerusalem @rscarlets @rscarlets@aoir.social <mailto:rscarlets@aoir.social> https://www.rebeccascharlach.com/

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New OA Book "Digital Media, Denunciation and Shaming: The Court of Public Opinion"
by Huang, Qian 13 Sep '24

13 Sep '24

Dear colleagues, We are excited to announce the publication of our new open-access book "Digital Media, Denunciation and Shaming: The Court of Public Opinion" (by Daniel Trottier, Qian Huang, Rashid Gabdulhakov) This book offers a common set of concepts to help make sense of online shaming practices, accounting for instances of discrimination and injury that morally divide readers and at times risk unjust and disproportionate harm to those under scrutiny. Digital media denunciation has become a primary form of expression and entertainment across media environments, with new socially desirable forms of accountability under movements such as #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter addressing longstanding forms of systematic and interpersonal abuse. Building on recent scholarship on shaming, surveillance and denunciation in fixed contexts, this study generates a cross-contextual and multi-actor account of practices like ‘cancel culture’, ‘doxing’ and ‘status degradation ceremonies’. It addresses instances of moral ambivalence by discussing how digital shaming becomes normalised and embedded across socio-cultural and institutional settings. The authors establish key actors and practices in online denunciations of individuals in a range of cases and contexts, including responses to COVID-19, political polarisation, and social justice movements, as well as more local and quotidian circumstances. They draw from empirical data including interviews with nearly 100 individuals targeted by mediated shaming and/or involved in these practices, as well as ethnographic observations of digital vigilantism and discourse analysis of press coverage and online comments relating to online shaming. Diverse applications and contexts, including China, the UK, Russia, and Central Asia, are considered, advancing an ambivalent understanding of media and denunciation that reconciles progressive and regressive practices, as well as celebratory and critical accounts of these practices. This book is recommended reading for advanced students and researchers of online visibility and harm across media studies, cultural studies and sociology. With thanks to the Dutch Research Council (NWO) for their support in making this title open access. Free download: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003453017 Kind regards, Dr. Qian Huang Assistant Professor | University of Groningen | Faculty of Arts | Centre for Media and Journalism Studies

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