Excavating Awareness and Power in Data Science: A Manifesto for Trustworthy Pervasive Data Research

Frequent public uproar over forms of data science that rely on information about people demonstrates the challenges of defining and demonstrating trustworthy digital data research practices. This paper reviews problems of trustworthiness in what we term pervasive data research: scholarship that relies on the rich information generated about people through digital interaction. We highlight the entwined problems of participant unawareness of such research and the relationship of pervasive data research to corporate datafication and surveillance. We suggest a way forward by drawing from the history of a different methodological approach in which researchers have struggled with trustworthy practice: ethnography. To grapple with the colonial legacy of their methods, ethnographers have developed analytic lenses and researcher practices that foreground relations of awareness and power. These lenses are inspiring but also challenging for pervasive data research, given the flattening of contexts inherent in digital data collection. We propose ways that pervasive data researchers can incorporate reflection on awareness and power within their research to support the development of trustworthy data science

Comunicação digital e ameaças híbridas

La amenaza híbrida es un concepto que aparece en documentos oficiales y estrategias de seguridad de los estados. Tanto la UE como la OTAN han tomado medidas serias para contrarrestar la actividad relacionada con las amenazas híbridas. Este monográfico sobre comunicación digital y amenazas híbridas tiene como objetivo avanzar en la comprensión de cómo los actores de amenazas híbridas utilizan y pueden potencialmente explotar el entorno de la información para atacar las sociedades democráticas y los procesos de toma de decisiones en diferentes niveles, para diferentes propósitos. Las TIC han traído avances notables en la forma en que obtenemos información y construimos conciencia sobre el mundo y sus eventos e interactuamos con los demás, pero al mismo tiempo crean oportunidades para realizar operaciones  e influenciar con una intención hostil. La guerra política, las medidas activas y las acciones encubiertas dirigidas por la comunicación no son nuevas, y la propaganda se ha utilizado a lo largo de la historia en situaciones de conflicto y guerra. Estas herramientas son empleadas por actores autoritarios hostiles y / o en una escala que ha interferido en procesos democráticos como las elecciones, erosiona la confianza en las instituciones, polariza y divide las sociedades de manera malsana. Dado que los seres humanos toman decisiones basadas en sus representaciones sobre el mundo y la información disponible a través de interacciones simbólicas interpersonales y a través de los diferentes medios, la información puede ser utilizada deliberadamente para actividades malignas que produzcan efectos cognitivos, afectivos y conductuales.Hybrid Threats is a concept that has entered to many states official documents and security strategies. Both the EU and NATO have taken serious measures to counter hybrid threats related activity. This special issue on digital communication and hybrid threats aims to advance our understanding of how hybrid threat actors use and can potentially exploit the information environment for targeting our democratic societies and decision-making processes at different levels for different purposes. Information and communication technologies have brought remarkable advances in the ways we obtain information and build awareness on the world and its events and interact with the others, but at the same time these developments create opportunities for conducting information and influence operations with a hostile intent at an unprecedent scale.Political warfare, active measures, and communication-led covert actions operations are not new, and propaganda has been used throughout the history in conflict and war like situations.However today our digital communication environment and the communication tools that we employ for legitimate purposes are also being employed by hostile authoritarian actors and / or their proxies at scale that has interfered in our democratic processes like elections, erode trust in our institutions, polarize and divide our societies in an unhealthy ways and sow animosities between states and international partner countries. Since human beings make decisions based on their representations about the world and the information available through interpersonal symbolic interactions and through the different media, information can be deliberately utilized for malign activity to produce cognitive, affective and behavioral effects.Ameaças híbridas é um conceito que entrou em documentos oficiais e estratégias de segurança de muitos estados. Tanto a UE como a OTAN tomaram medidas sérias para combater a atividade relacionada com ameaças híbridas. Esta edição especial sobre comunicação digital e ameaças híbridas tem como objetivo avançar nossa compreensão de como os atores de ameaças híbridas usam e podem explorar o ambiente de informações para direcionar nossas sociedades democráticas e processos de tomada de decisão em diferentes níveis para diferentes fins. As tecnologias de informação e comunicação trouxeram avanços notáveis ​​nas maneiras como obtemos informações e construímos consciência sobre o mundo e seus eventos e interagimos com os outros, mas, ao mesmo tempo, esses desenvolvimentos criam oportunidades para conduzir informações e influenciar operações com uma intenção hostil em um escala sem precedentes. A guerra política, as medidas ativas e as operações de ações secretas conduzidas pela comunicação não são novas, e a propaganda foi usada ao longo da história em conflitos e situações semelhantes à guerra. No entanto, hoje nosso ambiente de comunicação digital e as ferramentas de comunicação que empregamos para fins legítimos também estão sendo empregados por atores autoritários hostis e / ou seus representantes em escala que tem interferido em nossos processos democráticos como eleições, corroendo a confiança em nossas instituições, polarizando e dividindo nossas sociedades de forma prejudicial à saúde e semeiam animosidades entre Estados e países parceiros internacionais.&nbsp

All the protestors fit to count: using geospatial affordances to estimate protest event size

Protest events are a hallmark of social movement tactics. Large crowds in public spaces send a clear message to those in authority. Consequently, estimating crowd size is important for clarifying how much support a particular movement has been able to garner. This is significant for policymakers and constructing public opinion alike. Efforts to accurately estimate crowd size are plagued with issues: the cost of renting aircraft (if done by air), the challenge of visibility and securing building access (if done by rooftops), and issues related to perspective and scale (if done on the ground). Airborne camera platforms like drones, balloons, and kites are geospatial affordances that open new opportunities to better estimate crowd size. In this article we adapt traditional aerial imaging techniques for deployment on an “unmanned aerial vehicle” (UAV, popularly drone) and apply the method to small (1,000) and large (30,000+) events. Ethical guidelines related to drone safety are advanced, questions related to privacy are raised, and we conclude with a discussion of what standards should guide new technologies if they are to be used for the public good

How Does AI Fail Us? A Typological Theorization of AI Failures

AI incidents, often resulting from the complex interplay of algorithms, human agents, and situations, violate norms and can cause minor or catastrophic errors. This study systematically examines these incidents by developing a typology of AI failure and linking these modes to AI task types. Using a computationally intensive grounded theory approach, we analyzed 466 unique reported real-world AI incidents from 2013 to 2023. Our findings reveal an AI failure typology with six modes, including artifact malfunction, artifact misuse, algorithmic bias, agency oversight, situational unresponsiveness, and value misalignment. Furthermore, we explore the relationship between these failure modes and the tasks performed by AI, uncovering four propositions that provide a framework for future research. Our study contributes to the literature by offering a more holistic perspective on the challenges faced by AI-powered systems, beyond the critical challenges of fairness, transparency, and responsibility noted by the literature

Marketing Intelligence: Boom or Bust of Service Marketing?

Marketing intelligence fosters two major developments within digital service marketing. On the one hand, a boom of services seems to have evolved, accelerated by the opportunities of marketing intelligence. It has contributed to the optimization of customer experiences, e.g., supported by mobile, personalized, and customized marketing services. On the other hand, (digital) self-services are likely to pervert the term “service”. Lifecycle marketing, including annoying marketing communication in real-time, automated price adjustment and programmatic advertising based on artificial intelligence, affects the vision of fully standardized marketing automation. Additionally, there are incentives to pollute the digital information in order to manufacture opinions. Fake news is one popular example. This leads to the (open) question if marketing intelligence means service boom or bust of marketing. This contribution aims to elaborate the boom-and-bust aspects of marketing intelligence and suggests a trade-off. The method applied in this paper will be a descriptive and conceptual literature review, through which the paradigmatic thoughts will be juxtaposed from the perspective of service

“You gotta believe in something, something, something”: Evoking literacy lives as \u3cem\u3enostalgia for the future\u3c/em\u3e

We render in this theoretical inquiry, informed by empirical data, understandings of how preservice teachers’ literacy lives come into curricular considerations of future teaching and learning in the secondary English classroom. In doing this work, we wondered about the past, present, and future lives of teachers: how might we understand the teaching of English as profoundly nostalgic work? Building upon the notion of “nostalgia for the future”, and drawing across curriculum theory, literacy research, teaching and teacher education research, and the music of Frank Ocean, we attend to dangerous nostalgia in the current political moment, while also finding nostalgia for the future useful for ways in which through this considering we may envision and enact more just futures. We assert this nostalgia for the future, one necessarily prospective and not solely retrospective, as informed by written reflections authored by preservice teachers and teacher educators, and reflections of teaching activities in undergraduate and internship-year teacher-preparation courses. Ultimately we argue the concept affords a frame for making sense of the past while also orienting preservice teachers forward, building on that past critically for the work of imagining and constructing more just worlds for their future students