The Politics of Privacy—A Useful Tautology

While communication and media studies tend to define privacy with reference to data security, current processes of datafication and commodification substantially transform ways of how people act in increasingly dense communicative networks. This begs for advancing research on the flow of individual and organizational information considering its relational, contextual and, in consequence, political dimensions. Privacy, understood as the control over the flow of individual or group information in relation to communicative actions of others, frames the articles assembled in this thematic issue. These contributions focus on theoretical challenges of contemporary communication and media privacy research as well as on structural privacy conditions and people’s mundane communicative practices underlining inherent political aspect. They highlight how particular acts of doing privacy are grounded in citizen agency realized in datafied environments. Overall, this collection of articles unfolds the concept of ‘Politics of Privacy’ in diverse ways, contributing to an emerging body of communication and media research

Following Politicians on Social Media: Effects for Political Information, Peer Communication, and Youth Engagement

Young citizens increasingly turn to social media platforms for political information. These platforms enable direct communication between politicians and citizens, circumventing the influence of traditional news outlets. We still know little about the consequences of direct contact with politicians on such platforms for citizens’ political participation. Here, we argue that the interplay of different actors in the political news diet of citizens should be investigated from a networked communication perspective. Relying on a cross-sectional survey of young Danes (15–25 years old, n = 567), we investigate the relationship between following politicians on social media and: (a) the composition of young citizens’ political media diet; and (b) their civic messaging and campaign participation. Following political actors on social media relates to increased campaign engagement and can be a catalyst for young people’s exposure to campaign news, but their friends and followers function as the main node of their political online networks. We document a process of the de-mediation of politics on social media: Established news media lose influence as primary information sources for young citizens. We discuss these results in the context of users’ active curation and passive selection of their political social media diet

Degrees of deception: the effects of different types of COVID-19 misinformation and the effectiveness of corrective information in crisis times

Responding to widespread concerns about misinformation’s impact on democracy, we conducted an experiment in which we exposed German participants to different degrees of misinformation on COVID-19 connected to politicized (immigration) and apolitical (runners) issues (N = 1,490). Our key findings show that partially false information is more credible and persuasive than completely false information, and also more difficult to correct. People with congruent prior attitudes are more likely to perceive misinformation as credible and agree with its positions than people with incongruent prior attitudes. We further show that although fact-checkers can lower the perceived credibility of misinformation on both runners and migrants, corrective messages do not affect attitudes toward migrants. As a key contribution, we show that different degrees of misinformation can have different impacts: more nuanced deviations from facticity may be more harmful as they are difficult to detect and correct while being more credible

Infections in status epilepticus: A retrospective 5-year cohort study

AbstractPurposeStatus epilepticus (SE) has attracted renewed interest lately, and efforts are made to optimize every treatment stage. For refractory SE, optimal supporting care involves mechanical ventilation and intensive care unit (ICU) admission. Infections often complicate SE and recently a single-centre observational study demonstrated an association between infections and poor short-term outcome of SE in a cohort of severely ill patients. We have here attempted to replicate those findings in a different cohort.MethodWe performed a retrospective observational study and included all patients with a diagnosis of SE during 2008–2012 at a Swedish tertiary referral centre.ResultsThe cohort consisted of 103 patients (53% female, 47% male, median age 62 years, range 19–87 years). In house mortality was less than 2 and 70% of the patients’ were discharged home. The most common aetiologies of SE were uncontrolled epilepsy (37%) and brain tumours (16%). A total of 39 patients suffered infections during their stay. Presence of infection was associated with mechanical ventilation (OR 3.344, 95% CI 1.44–7.79) as well as not being discharged home (OR2.705, 95% CI 1.14–6.44), and duration of SE was significantly longer in patients with infection (median 1 day vs. 2.5 days, p<0.001).ConclusionWe conclude that the previously described association between infections, a longer SE duration, and an unfavourable outcome of SE seems valid also in SE of less severe aetiology

News website, search engine or social media?: Explaining different pathways to news online

How do we choose where we access news online, and how does this shape how we understand and engage with it? Judith Möller, Robbert Nicolai van de Velde, Lisa Merten and Cornelius Puschmann examine these questions in the context of a fragmented set of online news pathways, and find that levels of political interest and trust are more significant than extreme political opinions for shaping our habits

A framework for privacy preserving digital trace data collection through data donation

A potentially powerful method of social-scientific data collection and investigation has been created by an unexpected institution: the law. Article 15 of the EU’s 2018 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mandates that individuals have electronic access to a copy of their personal data, and all major digital platforms now comply with this law by providing users with “data download packages” (DDPs). Through voluntary donation of DDPs, all data collected by public and private entities during the course of citizens’ digital life can be obtained and analyzed to answer social-scientific questions – with consent. Thus, consented DDPs open the way for vast new research opportunities. However, while this entirely new method of data collection will undoubtedly gain popularity in the coming years, it also comes with its own questions of representativeness and measurement quality, which are often evaluated systematically by means of an error framework. Therefore, in this paper we provide a blueprint for digital trace data collection using DDPs, and devise a “total error framework” for such projects. Our error framework for digital trace data collection through data donation is intended to facilitate high quality social-scientific investigations using DDPs while critically reflecting its unique methodological challenges and sources of error. In addition, we provide a quality control checklist to guide researchers in leveraging the vast opportunities afforded by this new mode of investigation

Demographic and pregnancy‐related predictors of postnatal contraception uptake: A cross‐sectional study

Objective: To examine the uptake of postnatal contraception (PNC) and experiences of PNC care across a geographical region of England. Design: Cross‐sectional online survey. Setting: The North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care System (ICS). Population: Women who had completed a pregnancy in the previous 3 years. Methods: The uptake of PNC by accessed method(s) and the availability of preferred method(s) is described, and adjusted odds ratios are reported for group differences in uptake by characteristics of interest. Main outcome measures: Uptake of medically prescribed/administered contraception and uptake of long‐acting reversible contraception (LARC) during the postnatal period, and access to preferred PNC methods. Results: Although almost half of respondents (47.1%; n = 1178) reinitiated some form of sexual activity during the postnatal period, only 38.7% (n = 969) of respondents accessed a medically prescribed/administered contraceptive method postnatally, and only 15.5% (n = 389) of respondents accessed a LARC. It is a matter of concern that 18.8% (n = 451) of respondents indicated that they were unable to access their preferred PNC. In multivariate analysis, younger age, lower household income, higher multiparity, operative delivery, unplanned pregnancy and not breastfeeding were significant predictors of higher PNC uptake. Conclusions: The uptake of PNC in this cohort was low, with almost a fifth of women unable to access their preferred method. However, there was some evidence that women belonging to groups perceived to be at risk of rapid repeat pregnancy were more likely to access reliable PNC methods

Towards Reflective AI:Needs, Challenges and Directions for Future Research

Harnessing benefits and preventing harms of AI cannot be solved alone through technological fixes and regulation. It depends on a complex interplay between technology, societal governance, individual behaviour, organizational and societal dynamics. Enabling people to understand AI and the consequences of its use and design is a crucial element for ensuring responsible use of AI.In this report we suggest a new framework for the development and use of AI technologies in a way that harnesses the benefits and prevents the harmful effects of AI. We name it Reflective AI. The notion of Reflective AI that we propose calls for adopting a holistic approach in the research and development of AI to investigate both what people need to learn about AI systems to develop better mental models i.e. an experiential knowledge of AI, to be able to use it safely and responsibly, as well as how this can be done and supported