Facebook needs to open up its data to impartial, outside researchers
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_fac... --------- Jeff Pooley, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Media & Communication Muhlenberg College 2400 Chew St., Allentown, PA 18104 484-664-3677 jeffpooley.com
I strongly agree with Jeff. Facebook and similar social media services have so far escaped a level of scrutiny and regulation commensurate with their influence in (at least American) society. A system through which independent researchers can obtain data samples (with all the necessary privacy protections) from these services is the very least we need as part of a comprehensive regulatory agenda. I think such an agenda should include privacy protections, provisions related to stalking/cyberbullying, competitiveness protections, free speech protections, and other related issues. With the Democratic Party in turmoil after the election, there may be space to put such an agenda into its platform. - - - - - Dr. Luis E. Hestres Assistant Professor Department of Communication The University of Texas at San Antonio One UTSA Circle San Antonio, TX 78249-0732 http://www.luishestres.com Want to support our tax deductible nonprofit work by contributing to the UTSA department of communication? Please visit: https://giving.utsa.edu/FriendsofCommunication Thanks for your support! On November 12, 2016 at 10:27:26 AM, 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_fac... --------- 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 Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
This article from the NY Times shows that the there is a struggle within Facebook itself concerning the so-called "Filter Bubble" effect of the platforms algorithms and newsfeeds that may have affected the election. This does not at all obviate the need for FB to open up its data nor does it address Robert Gehl's compelling argument that it might be best if we just stopped feeding the beast of our selves, sociality, labor, and value. But it does highlight the fact that FB is not a black box and that the organizational corporate culture of FB is an important and woefully under analyzed factor in this issue. Andrew Herman The article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/14/technology/facebook-is-said-to-question-it... ________________________________________ From: Air-L <air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Luis E. Hestres <luis.hestres@utsa.edu> Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2016 12:21 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org; Jeff Pooley Subject: Re: [Air-L] Facebook needs to open up its data to impartial, outside researchers I strongly agree with Jeff. Facebook and similar social media services have so far escaped a level of scrutiny and regulation commensurate with their influence in (at least American) society. A system through which independent researchers can obtain data samples (with all the necessary privacy protections) from these services is the very least we need as part of a comprehensive regulatory agenda. I think such an agenda should include privacy protections, provisions related to stalking/cyberbullying, competitiveness protections, free speech protections, and other related issues. With the Democratic Party in turmoil after the election, there may be space to put such an agenda into its platform. - - - - - Dr. Luis E. Hestres Assistant Professor Department of Communication The University of Texas at San Antonio One UTSA Circle San Antonio, TX 78249-0732 http://www.luishestres.com Want to support our tax deductible nonprofit work by contributing to the UTSA department of communication? Please visit: https://giving.utsa.edu/FriendsofCommunication Thanks for your support! On November 12, 2016 at 10:27:26 AM, 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_fac... --------- 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 Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ _______________________________________________ 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 Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Has anyone seen any follow ups to this story of the Trump campaign using social media in general and Facebook in particular to suppress the African American vote? https://thinkprogress.org/trump-campaign-boasts-of-major-voter-suppression-e... ________________________________________ From: Air-L <air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org> on behalf of Luis E. Hestres <luis.hestres@utsa.edu> Sent: Saturday, November 12, 2016 12:21 PM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org; Jeff Pooley Subject: Re: [Air-L] Facebook needs to open up its data to impartial, outside researchers I strongly agree with Jeff. Facebook and similar social media services have so far escaped a level of scrutiny and regulation commensurate with their influence in (at least American) society. A system through which independent researchers can obtain data samples (with all the necessary privacy protections) from these services is the very least we need as part of a comprehensive regulatory agenda. I think such an agenda should include privacy protections, provisions related to stalking/cyberbullying, competitiveness protections, free speech protections, and other related issues. With the Democratic Party in turmoil after the election, there may be space to put such an agenda into its platform. - - - - - Dr. Luis E. Hestres Assistant Professor Department of Communication The University of Texas at San Antonio One UTSA Circle San Antonio, TX 78249-0732 http://www.luishestres.com Want to support our tax deductible nonprofit work by contributing to the UTSA department of communication? Please visit: https://giving.utsa.edu/FriendsofCommunication Thanks for your support! On November 12, 2016 at 10:27:26 AM, 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_fac... --------- 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 Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ _______________________________________________ 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 Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
Or maybe we need to leave this corporate media behemoth, one that is openly about selling our sociality, desires, and fears to the highest bidder, which every four years will happen to be political campaigns. Did you like Trumpism? If so, that bit of data is fed back to you in an increasingly intense form. Were you so convinced of another Clinton in the White House that you liked a campaign slogan? Then you get those marketing messages fed to you to confirm your beliefs. Now we get to go back to having particular brands of shoes and cars presented to us, but rest assured, in the next election cycle it will shift back to reductive political slogans and clickbait conspiracy theories. Trading away our thoughts, fears, desires, and preferences for the chance to connect to one another remains a terrible exchange. Previously, we humans connected with one another just fine without having to bare our souls to a corporation. So the answer to the quandary of Facebook and the 2016 election is not more open data. It's less. And it's up to us to recognize this and leave Facebook for something better. - Rob Robert W. Gehl Associate Professor, Department of Communication Affiliated Faculty, Department of Writing & Rhetoric The University of Utah www.robertwgehl.org | @robertwgehl www.socialmediaalternatives.org Sent from our OS on our Internet Please read my book: Reverse Engineering Social Media Winner of the 2015 Association of Internet Researchers Nancy Baym Book Award http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/2275_reg.html On 11/12/2016 09:27 AM, Jeff Pooley 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_fac...
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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
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
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
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
-- *[**MUTATION**]* *Art is Open Source *- http://www.artisopensource.net *[**CITIES**]* *Human Ecosystems Ltd* - http://human-ecosystems.com *[**NEAR FUTURE DESIGN**]* *Nefula Ltd* - http://www.nefula.com *[**RIGHTS**]* *Ubiquitous Commons *- http://www.ubiquitouscommons.org --- Professor of Near Future and Transmedia Design at ISIA Design Florence: http://www.isiadesign.fi.it/
participants (5)
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Andrew Herman -
Jeff Pooley -
Luis E. Hestres -
Robert W. Gehl -
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