Hello everyone, of course reframing the problem into "FB needs to open up data with researchers" only partially addresses the problem. Because the problem is and remains the complete power asymmetry between "us" and "data". As of today, we cannot know what data/information is harvested from our behaviour, we have no way of intervening, and we also have no tools for perception, to perceive what happens and what implications it has. In this scenario, the proposal of the "ethical researcher in the white coat" who has access to the data, if stated on its own, seems limited, to say the least. We may want to constantly try to address these issues in other terms, those of people's empowerment, not ones which, in the end, have people basically not move from their position on the petri dish. No problems are solved in the lab, problems are solved right in the middle of society, with everyone involved. Sorry for the small rant, but this is a constant: it is not researchers who need the data, it is people themselves, who need awareness, tools, coordination/organisation capacity; and there's just too much research that does not acknowledge this; entire city administrations who are interested in the analytics, in the predictions, in the optimizations, etcetera, and not a bit in reducing the power asymmetry. And the examples, as you all perfectly know, could go on. These "Trump" things (as the ones with the Movimento 5 Stelle or the Lega Nord, in Italy where I live, or the extreme right movements all over, etc ) happen because there are divides, and because these divides appear in scenarios of complete power asymmetry, in which a few can easily steer them. We might want to keep this in mind s On Sat, Nov 12, 2016 at 6:27 PM, Jeff Pooley <pooley@muhlenberg.edu> wrote:
Facebook needs to open up its data to impartial, outside researchers: the future of democracy in the U.S. may hang in the balance:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/11/11/we_ can_t_know_whether_facebook_is_to_blame_for_trump_s_win.html
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Jeff Pooley, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Media & Communication Muhlenberg College 2400 Chew St., Allentown, PA 18104 484-664-3677 jeffpooley.com _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/ listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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