Visual communication in practice: A texto-material approach to WhatsApp in Mexico City

With more than 2 billion users, WhatsApp is one of the most important mobile technologies in the world. Accordingly, scholarly interest in WhatsApp has grown in recent years. However, studies have tended to separate WhatsApp’s visual and textual elements from the analysis of its technological infrastructure. Alternatively, we argue for a “texto- material” approach that examines the links between both dimensions. We elaborate on the analytical gains that come from this approach by examining the use of WhatsApp in Mexico City. We posit that considering how textual/visual elements and technological features are interwoven is crucial for understanding the cultural specificity of WhatsApp’s development and use in places like Latin America.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Sociales::Centro de Investigación en Comunicación (CICOM

“The most aggressive of algorithms”: User awareness of and attachment to TikTok’s content personalization

This paper examines how a group of TikTok users in Costa Rica made sense of the workings of its algorithmic content personalization, how they came to this understanding, and what the implications of their self-proclaimed awareness are for establishing a particular affective relationship with the app. Drawing on actor-network theory, we argue that the awareness that these users have of algorithms shapes their affective attachment to TikTok (which they often describe as a form of “addiction”). The paper examines how users carefully enacted various practical roles in order to maintain the affect associated with personalized content on the app. In this way, we add nuance to dominant accounts of the user-algorithm relationship. Rather than viewing it as constant, fixed, and universal, we argue for considering it as “always in the making.” The paper shows how this relationship undergoes multiple “passages” through which distinct capacities for both users and algorithms emerge.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Sociales::Centro de Investigación en Comunicación (CICOM

Establishing the Internet in Costa Rica: Co-optation and the Closure of Technological Controversies

Abstract Research in science and technology studies has devoted significant attention to technological controversies and the mechanisms that actors employ to resolve them. This paper contributes to this literature by developing the notion of co-optation as a dynamic of closure. Co-optation is conceptualized as the incorporation of an actor or group into the organizational structure of another group in order to avert threat or adapt to a context of change. Drawing on the history of the Internet in Costa Rica from 1990 to 2005, this study examines a controversy between two distinct models for the development of computing networks in this country: the academic, sociotechnical network and the state-sponsored, commercial project. The analysis shows that the dispute between these groups ended when the Costa Rican government co-opted leading figures of the academic network into its structure. The notion of co-optation helps us theorize shifts in the configuration of relations between groups that lead to the partial resolution of conflicts and have important consequences for the development of technological infrastructures

Uncertain Knowledge. Studying “Truth” and “Conspiracies” in the Digital Age

It is nowadays commonplace to find statements about how the web has increased the circulation and reach of “conspiracy theories”. In France, the attack on the Capitol by .QAnon activists in January 2021, and before that the attacks of 2015, or the surveys commissioned by the Jean Jaurès Foundation, have fueled many alarming discourses about the spread of “fake news” on the internet. The pandemic context in which we have been living since March 2020, which is marked by a high level of uncertainty and the complex intertwining of scientific, political, and geostrategic controversies, has strengthened the grip of the notion that the internet and social media now massively contribute to the disinformation of the public.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Sociales::Centro de Investigación en Comunicación (CICOM

Blogs and bloggers

This entry discusses the main characteristics of blogs and bloggers and their coevolution since the start of blogging in the 1990s. Blogs are a kind of website that can be used to present introspective ruminations or an overview of daily events. A blog can serve as an instrument for political mobilization, a journalistic endeavor, an open-ended literary project, or a means for constant exhibition of the self, and in some cases combines more than one of these functions. However, there is little agreement about what features make a blog a blog. Most authors emphasize features such as the frequent publication of content, a reverse chronological order to display blog posts, and archives of previous posts.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Sociales::Centro de Investigación en Comunicación (CICOM

Le blog en controverse : analyse du blog comme support d'une communauté en réseaux informatiques

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal

A la conquista del mundo en línea: Internet como objeto de estudio (1990-2007)

Este artículo explora el desarrollo de la investigación sobre Internet (principalmente anglófona) entre 1990 y 2007. Para esto, se analizan los principales ejes temáticos de los estudios sobre tal medio a lo largo de casi dos décadas, y se presentan diversos debates que han definido su evolución como objeto de estudio. Se sugiere, a final de cuentas, que los estudios sobre Internet constituyen un campo de conocimientos en proceso de construcción, con creciente legitimidad académica.This paper explores the development of internet research (mostly anglophone) between 1990 and 2007. To do so, some major theoretical topicsof internet studies are analyzed, and several key debates are described in order to show the internet’s evolution as an object of study. It is suggested that internet studies have become a field of knowledge under construction with increasing academic legitimacy.UCR::Vicerrectoría de Docencia::Ciencias Sociales::Facultad de Ciencias Sociales::Escuela de Ciencias de la Comunicación Colectiv