Superheroes or Group of Heroes? : The Avengers as Multiple Protagonist Superhero Cinema

Heroes have often been thought of as singular individuals standing apart from the rest of the world, and the current superheroes are no exception. Even though their comic book counterparts exist in complex social networks of supporting characters and related colorful heroes, cinematic adaptations often “kowtow” to single-hero worship (Burke 2008, 101), isolating the hero from a larger narrative world and networks of characters. This changed with the success The Avengers in. This film and series which it was a part of – The Marvel Cinematic Universe - quickly became a trendsetter within the larger media landscape. In this article, I present a close formal analysis of The Avengers and contextualize it within the larger narrative of the cinematic universe. I argue that the film belongs to the genre of multiple protagonist cinema, yet in a form that straddles the line between the two usual variations of that form of cinema. Multiple protagonist cinema is usually either a form often reserved for non-mainstream, experimental narratives in one extreme or it is just a slight variation on pre-existing mainstream Hollywood formulas in the other extreme. The Avengers finds middle ground between these extremes, and manages to do so with special consideration to the superhero genre

The Absent Algorithm: Communicating around artificial intelligence in enterprise social media

If your medium is shaped by an algorithm, then what reason would you have to hide it? This article explores the topic of how the algorithmic shaping of communication on enterprise social media (ESM) is in turn communicated by platform developers to potential customer organizations. Specifically, the article analyzes how this topic is usually not discussed and why. As a case study, the author performs a qualitative analysis of the corporate communication surrounding the ESM Workplace from Meta, analyzing the 23 podcast episodes and 123 online videos produced by Meta on this topic. The case is selected due to the prolific discussion of algorithmic curation in other Meta products, and the presence of such algorithmic underpinnings on Workplace itself. Despite this, Meta’s emphasis is usually on more explicit examples of artificial intelligence in the form of communicative bots, and especially on how these may circumvent algorithmically curated or individualized communication patterns of employees. Drawing on critical management and organizational studies, the author discusses possible explanations relating to the distribution of power between organizations and platforms.

From Algorithmic Management to Data- driven Labour Organising. A trade union approach to workplace datafication

The increasing datafication of the workplace is often cast as a means of imposing organisational and managerial control on workers. This reflection note moves beyond this view and coins the term data-driven labour organising to discuss the potential of work- place datafication as a way to inform workers about their working conditions and how to use data to advocate for their collective goals. Forging a research agenda on data-driv- en labour organising, the reflection note engages with the historical roots of Scandinavi- an IS research, particularly the trade union (TU) approach. Mobilising the TU approach as a vantage point for re-imagining research on workplace datafication, the reflection note outlines three emerging research topics critical for shifting the research focus from using data for managerial purposes to using data for labour organising. The reflection note concludes by discussing how the TU tradition also invokes a certain research ethos of prac- tical and political engagement, prompting IS researchers to get their hands dirty by actively seeking to reshape the trajectory of digitalisation through practical engagement