Mobilizing media studies in an age of datafication

We are at a pivotal moment for understanding and deciding what is actually at stake with datafication. In this contribution, I argue for the increasingly important and politicized role of media scholarship to privilege lived experiences and situated practices as a counter to the active neutralization of data-driven systems and their implications. In particular, I argue for the relevance of media studies to emphasize the uses to which technology is put and explore how data practices relate to other social practices and historical contexts as a way to broaden the parameters of response, moving data politics beyond the confines of the technology itself, and contending instead with the premise and terms of the debate

From breastfeeding to politics, Facebook steps up censorship

Facebook has recently tried to close down the popular Anarchist Memes page on its site in the latest of a string of crackdowns on political online activism. It's just one more example of the social media police in action

The datafied welfare state: a perspective from the UK

The crisis emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the relevance of the welfare state as well as the role of platforms and data infrastructures across key areas of public and social life. Whilst the crisis shed light on the ways in which these might intersect, the turn to data-driven systems in public administration has been a prominent development in several countries for quite some time. In this chapter I focus on the UK as a pertinent example of key trends at the intersection of technological infrastructures and the welfare state. In particular, using developments in UK welfare sectors as a lens, I advance a two-part argument about the ways in which data infrastructures are transforming state-citizen relations through on the one hand advancing an actuarial logic based on personalised risk and the individualisation of social problems (what I refer to as responsibilisation) and, on the other, entrenching a dependency on an economic model that perpetuates the circulation of data accumulation (what I refer to as rentierism). These mechanisms, I argue, fundamentally shift the 'matrix of social power' that made the modern welfare state possible and position questions of data infrastructures as a core component of how we need to understand social change. "We are witnessing the gradual disappearance of the postwar British welfare stat

Towards data justice unionism? A labour perspective on AI governance

We are entering a new era of technological determinism and solutionism in which governments and business actors are seeking data-driven change, assuming that Artificial Intelligence is now inevitable and ubiquitous. But we have not even started asking the right questions, let alone developed an understanding of the consequences. Urgently needed is debate that asks and answers fundamental questions about power. This book brings together critical interrogations of what constitutes AI, its impact and its inequalities in order to offer an analysis of what it means for AI to deliver benefits for everyone. The book is structured in three parts: Part 1, AI: Humans vs. Machines, presents critical perspectives on human-machine dualism. Part 2, Discourses and Myths About AI, excavates metaphors and policies to ask normative questions about what is ‘desirable’ AI and what conditions make this possible. Part 3, AI Power and Inequalities, discusses how the implementation of AI creates important challenges that urgently need to be addressed. Bringing together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and regional contexts, this book offers a vital intervention on one of the most hyped concepts of our times

Authenticity

As discourses of the empowering nature of digital media for ordinary citizens and non-elites have developed, certain attributes of these technologies have become prominent. The question of ‘authenticity’, in particular, has received significant attention in an age that hungers for anything that feels authentic, just as we lament more and more that it is a world of inauthenticity. Social media, especially, has come to occupy an important role in this debate as social media companies and commentators have jointly advanced a myth of ‘us’; the generating of the idea that platforms like Facebook underpin a kind of natural collectivity. That is, the institutional architectures and political agendas that usually accompany mediated activity are made away with, and instead, a ‘new authenticity’ towards the public can emerge. At the same time, as the myths of depoliticized and deinstitutionalized digital media become uncovered in an age of bots, filter bubbles, and fake news, this attribution of authenticity becomes ever more complicated. This chapter will look at how the perceived authenticity of social media has been appropriated by different actors, giving examples of politicians, journalists, corporations and activists, and how this perception of social media is now being challenged by the growing debate on algorithmic design and computational propaganda as a key feature of the contemporary public sphere

Il realismo della sorveglianza e le politiche dell'immaginazione: non c'è alternativa? [translated by Philip di Salvo]

This article engages with the interplay between data-driven surveillance and contemporary social imaginaries, using research based on the aftermath of the Snowden leaks. Drawing on Mark Fisher’s use of the term “realism” in relation to capitalist realism, I advance the argument here that public debate and response to the Snowden leaks indicate a similar ‘‘pervasive atmosphere” that comes to regulate thought and action, in which the active normalization of surveillance infrastructures limits the possibilities of even imagining alternatives – a condition I describe as “surveillance realism”. In so doing, the article posits a way to reveal the contingency and construction of our current digital environment, advancing a critique suitable for an emancipatory politics. Questo articolo indaga i punti di contatto tra la sorveglianza digitale e gli immaginari sociali contemporanei, basandosi sui risultati di ricerche svolte sulle conseguenze del caso Snowden. Facendo riferimento all’uso di Mark Fisher del termine «realismo» nella sua accezione di «realismo capitalista», sostengo qui che il dibattito pubblico sorto attorno alle rivelazioni di Snowden indichi una simile «atmosfera pervasiva» in grado di indirizzare il pensiero e l’azione e dove la normalizzazione attiva delle infrastrutture di sorveglianza limita persino le possibilità di immaginazione di alternative, una condizione che definisco «realismo della sorveglianza». In questo senso, l’articolo propone una possibilità di rivelazione della contingenza e della costruzione del nostro ambiente digitale contemporaneo, proponendo una critica funzionale a una politica di emancipazione

Predictive policing and the automated suppression of dissent

Following a special workshop convened by the Media Policy Project on 'Automation, Prediction and Digital Inequalities', Lina Dencik, Lecturer in the School of Media, Journalism and Cultural Studies at the University of Cardiff, reflects on some of the implications of using large data-sets for policing purposes. A summary of the workshop will be available on this website shortly