Tourist in the (K)Now: Social Rapportage and the Performative Rapport of Social Media

Special issue on 'Reterritorializing Digital Performance From South to North: This paper explores how tourists, through the use of social and digital media platforms, are able to develop formations and connections that enhance a sense of rapport. The role of tourist is articulated through a new term, the ‘rapporter’, and the activity of the rapporter takes place as ‘rapportage’. Additionally, I suggest that this is achieved through the availability of mobile Apps. I propose that through the process and act of rapportage individuals can disseminate their responses to events and experiences, which provides an opportunity for further rapport. The voices then become part of a collective rapport inspired to understand and connect with others, and can provide different examples compared to the divisive and often aggressive reporting frequently articulated as part of the ‘post-truth’ environment

Corporatised Identities ≠ Digital Identities: Algorithmic Filtering on Social Media and the Commercialisation of Presentations of Self

Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical identity theory requires modification when theorising about presentations of self on social media. This chapter contributes to these efforts, refining a conception of digital identities by differentiating them from ‘corporatised identities’. Armed with this new distinction, I ultimately argue that social media platforms’ production of corporatised identities undermines their users’ autonomy and digital well-being. This follows from the disentanglement of several commonly conflated concepts. Firstly, I distinguish two kinds of presentation of self that I collectively refer to as ‘expressions of digital identity’. These digital performances (boyd 2007) and digital artefacts (Hogan 2010) are distinct, but often confused. Secondly, I contend this confusion results in the subsequent conflation of corporatised identities – poor approximations of actual digital identities, inferred and extrapolated by algorithms from individuals’ expressions of digital identity – with digital identities proper. Finally, and to demonstrate the normative implications of these clarifications, I utilise MacKenzie’s (2014, 2019) interpretation of relational autonomy to propose that designing social media sites around the production of corporatised identities, at the expense of encouraging genuine performances of digital identities, has undermined multiple dimensions of this vital liberal value. In particular, the pluralistic range of authentic preferences that should structure flourishing human lives are being flattened and replaced by commercial, consumerist preferences. For these reasons, amongst others, I contend that digital identities should once again come to drive individuals’ actions on social media sites. Only upon doing so can individuals’ autonomy, and control over their digital identities, be rendered compatible with social media

Lost in Translation: Can We Talk About Big Data Fairly?

Big data and data science are global, there is no alternative in our connected, digi-tal world. Yet, for a truly open and fair science, cultural biases and different op-portunities across different countries must be taken into consideration. English has become the international language for the scientific debate: a single language is most convenient, moreover it is undergoing a process of refinement and adaptation to the science register. On the other hand, laboratories are populat-ed by researchers from all over the world, and much research takes place in non-English-speaking countries, where research tradition often develops moving from different perspectives, influenced by the cultural context. A fair and open science would miss an opportunity if it did not take into consid-eration the multilingualism and multiculturalism of the researchers as individuals and members of specific communities, and could also waste precious time and energies, as language barriers prevent cooperation. The paper will discuss the above-mentioned issues with examples and reflect on the changing role of librarians and information specialists within a global scientific community