Accepting but not engaging with it: Digital participation in local government‐run social credit systems in China

Over the past decade, China's central and municipal governments have consistently supported the development of social credit systems (SCSs). While research has highlighted the Chinese public's high approval and backing of SCSs, their engagement with these digital projects has not been fully explored. Based on 44 semi‐structured interviews, our research examines Chinese citizens' digital participation in government‐run SCSs at the local level. Our findings suggest that, despite perceiving SCSs as accepting and positive, most interviewees do not actively engage with local government‐run SCSs. Multiple factors can explain the gap between the high acceptance and low participation rates, including a lack of awareness regarding local SCSs, a perception that registering and maintaining a decent credit score requires major effort, various concerns involving data privacy and safety, algorithm accuracy and fairness, potential risks, unappealing benefits offered by SCSs, and the voluntary aspect of participating in local SCSs. Our research adds to the existing literature on digital governance in authoritarian contexts by explaining why Chinese citizens do not necessarily engage with state‐promoted digital projects

Acceptance or Resignation? Surveillance Technologies in China between the Social Credit System and Covid-19

openIn this thesis, I investigate the factors contributing to the high level of approval for the Social Credit System (SCS) in Cina. I explore the Chinese model of e-governance, provide a detailed overview of the SCS, explore the measures adopted to contrast the Covid-19 pandemic and the backlash they caused in the form of the "A4 Revolution", and finally I analyze and explain the high level of public support for the SCS. My research employs a qualitative strategy based on an abductive approach which correlates theory and findings in order to answer my selected research question. Key findings indicate that the integration of advanced technology, cultural values of social harmony, and the Chinese government's efforts to balance surveillance and privacy have contributed to the widespread acceptance of the SCS. I conclude that a combination of historical, cultural, and technological factors plays a significant role in the approval of the SCS, shedding light on the complex dynamics of governance in the digital age.In this thesis, I investigate the factors contributing to the high level of approval for the Social Credit System (SCS) in Cina. I explore the Chinese model of e-governance, provide a detailed overview of the SCS, explore the measures adopted to contrast the Covid-19 pandemic and the backlash they caused in the form of the "A4 Revolution", and finally I analyze and explain the high level of public support for the SCS. My research employs a qualitative strategy based on an abductive approach which correlates theory and findings in order to answer my selected research question. Key findings indicate that the integration of advanced technology, cultural values of social harmony, and the Chinese government's efforts to balance surveillance and privacy have contributed to the widespread acceptance of the SCS. I conclude that a combination of historical, cultural, and technological factors plays a significant role in the approval of the SCS, shedding light on the complex dynamics of governance in the digital age

Voice through silence algorithmic visibility, ordinary civic voices and bottom-up authoritarianism in the Brazilian crisis

From 2013 to 2018, Brazil was encapsulated in a multisited crisis that unsettled its political order. Unlike other turmoil in the country’s history, this one was strongly influenced by ordinary Brazilians who found a space to express themselves politically on digital platforms. This thesis aims to understand how the datafied government of users’ visibility by Facebook (Brazil’s most popular platform) can be understood to have structured these everyday experiences and, in so doing, to have prompted these individuals to (re)constitute the ways they act and comprehend themselves as citizens. To investigate these processes of civic becoming, the thesis develops a conceptual framework that uses elements of social practices theory to bridge critical notions of citizenship, recognition, datafication, and visibility. It is proposed that one of Facebook’s primary power techniques is the attempt to direct how the algorithmic visibility regime that supports its business model is imagined by users so as to try to prefigure these users’ actions. A thematic analysis of interviews with 47 users suggests that the ambiguous knowability of the platform’s machine learning algorithms gives rise to three sociomaterial imaginaries of its algorithmic visibility regime. Combined with assumptions about Brazil’s troubled democracy, these imaginaries (and the imagined others that populate them) are found to generate a paradoxical understanding of how civic worth is granted on Facebook, according to which being heard often depends on silencing others and oneself – a phenomenon theorised as bottom-up authoritarianism

Armonia sotto controllo: la regolazione del credito sociale nelle ‘città modello’ cinesi

Nel 2014 il governo cinese ha annunciato l’istituzione di un programma nazionale di credito sociale. L’iniziativa è sovente descritta in Occidente come uno strumento tecnologicamente avanzato di controllo autocratico attraverso l’attribuzione di un punteggio sociale. Scopo del presente contributo è dimostrare come una simile descrizione trovi fondamento in, e dia adito a, incomprensioni e pregiudizi rispetto al sistema giuridico cinese, esprimendo e perpetuando una visione ‘orientalistica’ di quest’ultimo. A questo fine, l’articolo si centra sulla regolazione dei programmi pilota di credito sociale attivi nelle ventotto città designate nel 2017 e nel 2019 come ‘modello’ dallo stesso governo cinese. L’analisi comparata di tali programmi dimostrerà come le città modello, almeno per il momento, evitino di ricorrere a sistemi di punteggio sociale facciano uso di tecnologie low-tech e di natura descrittiva, prevedano sanzioni limitate e, soprattutto, abbiano adottato un quadro giuridico relativamente trasparente e attento ai diritti dei soggetti valutati, specie per quanto concerne il trattamento, la circolazione e la pubblicazione dei dati. Il quadro che ne risulta invita alla cautela nel giudicare il programma cinese di credito sociale, specie alla luce delle numerose forme di quantificazione delle performances e di misurazione delle persone il cui impiego è diffuso in Occidente.In 2014 the Chinese State Council announced the establishment of a nationwide comprehensive social credit system. Western narratives often describe the initiative as a technologically enhanced tool of autocratic control for scoring people. Yet, as the paper aims to show, similar accounts are tainted by several misunderstandings which perpetuate Western orientalist postures towards Chinese law. For the purpose of comparatively assessing the Chinese social credit system, the paper analyses the pilot programs set up to monitor people and enterprises’ behaviour by twenty-eight Chinese cities. The analysis will demonstrate that these pilot programs rely on low-tech methodologies, have limited strings attached, and are based on a relatively transparent legal framework. From a comparative perspective, our findings suggest that Chinese cities’ experiments raise equal, if not fewer, problems than those posed by measurement practices widely employed in the West

From Dataveillance to Data Economy: Firm View on Data Protection

The increasing availability of electronic records and the expanded reliance on online communications and services have made available a huge amount of data about people’s behaviours, characteristics, and preferences. Advancements in data processing technology, known as big data, offer opportunities to increase organisational efficiency and competitiveness. Analytically sophisticated companies excel in their ability to extract value from the analysis of digital data. However, in order to exploit the potential economic benefits produced by big data and analytics, issues of data privacy and information security need to be addressed. In Europe, organisations processing personal data are being required to implement basic data protection principles, which are considered difficult to implement in big data environments. Little is known in the privacy studies literature about how companies manage the trade-off between data usage and data protection. This study contributes to explore the corporate data privacy environment, by focusing on the interrelationship between the data protection legal regime, the application of big data analytics to achieve corporate objectives, and the creation of an organisational privacy culture. It also draws insights from surveillance studies, particularly the idea of dataveillance, to identify potential limitations of the current legal privacy regime. The findings from the analysis of survey data show that big data and data protection support each other, but also that some frictions can emerge around data collection and data fusion. The demand for the integration of different data sources poses challenges to the implementation of data protection principles. However, this study finds no evidence that data protection laws prevent data gathering. Implications relevant for the debate on the reform of European data protection law are also drawn from these findings

The Superfluousness of Big Brother: Charting the Evolution of Surveillance in Twentieth and Twenty First Century American and Global Anglophone Literature and Television

This dissertation charts the evolution of surveillance as presented in twentieth and twenty-first century American and Global Anglophone literature and television. It analyzes six exemplary works: 1984, The Circle, Black Mirror, Purity, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and The Lowland. It seeks to move beyond the scope of Benthamite and Foucauldian approaches to surveillance studies in order to examine the post-panoptic structures of the synopticon and the banopticon. To this end, this dissertation argues the six illustrative works mentioned above help underscore the shift from the few watching the many to the many watching the few. It seeks to explain the paradox whereby the televisual capabilities have never been more powerful yet the need for them has been rendered superfluous by an attitudinal, paradigmatic shift in western society. Finally, this dissertation endeavors to explain how literature productively complicates the issue of watching and how, paradoxically, we have never been better connected while simultaneously never been more alone. It posits another paradox as a solution: that we can know someone better by reading their words than by connecting with them through “social media.