Our half-day, three-hour workshop employs the methods developed over the last year by our team at the Universities of Liverpool and Exeter, working on attitudes to data across varying areas of the UK workforce and research landscape. As a team, our shared interests lie in the sociotechnical - the everyday but complex interactions between people, technical systems and devices. By playing ‘seriously’ (de Saille et al, 2022) with LEGO to create models of complex sociotechnical phenomena, participants are encouraged to creatively visualise their relationships with data. This workshop may appeal to those interested in creative methodologies, interdisciplinary research, data ethics, and sociotechnical interaction. This workshop is designed to demonstrate, through active participation and engagement, rich qualitative research data which compares favourably with other qualitative approaches.

This approach builds upon the work of Coles-Kemp, Jensen, & Heath (2020) who held workshops for participants to outline their perceived cyber (in)securities. Other studies have focused on risk visualisation (Hall, Heath, & Coles-Kemp, 2015) and everyday data security. Asprion et al. (2020) similarly utilised LEGO Serious Play as an educational tool for visualisation, De Saille et al. (2022) used LEGO as a participatory method for health and social care, and Rashid et al (2020) used LEGO as a tool for wargaming cyberattacks. LEGO has been used across numerous disciplines due to its flexibility and utility as a method to engage with diverse groups.

In this workshop, we will introduce the research of our team, which has focused on attitudes to data in the workplace to inform future policy direction in the UK government with our partners and funders DSTL. Additionally, colleagues have sought to illuminate enablers for better access to smart data services for researchers in their advisory role for the Smart Data Research UK (Formerly Digital Footprints) programme, using creative workshops as a tool to engage simultaneously with experts and laypersons alike. Our research emphasises the importance of sociotechnical factors in decision-making and highlights important attitudes to the use of data, the accessibility of data, data awareness levels, and perceived security threats.

Participants in our workshop are given an introductory skills-based task, then encouraged to build a larger model visualising sociotechnical challenges based on set research questions in groups of 4+. This task is complex and multifaceted, requiring collaborative work and discussion among groups. Upon the completion of this task, volunteers are sought from each group to narrate their model, exploring the meaning behind key components.

Time is allowed for brainstorming and participants will be asked to reflect on a series of prompts to assist with their task. The participants are provided with a colour-coding guide, to help visualise their attitude towards different types of data. The exercise should also demonstrate how these attitudes can vary based on the context of a particular data flow and whether that data is for personal or professional consumption. Participants are encouraged to map their data use in their personal and professional lives while using a colour-coded guide and annotation to answer a series of research questions. This frames the exercise, and each group receives a different task, allowing for additional variety and experience sharing.

The goal is for each group to produce personal/professional visualisations highlighting attitudes to data. Groups are asked to share and discuss their models, which serves as a reflective process while also providing rich, ethnographic data. The workshop length is three hours, and all necessary equipment is provided. The goal of the workshop is to explore data use among research participants as well as to share our reflections on the development of LEGO workshops and associated best practices.

Our workshop has a wider conceptual value. We aim to offer key contributions to debates around the flow and interactions between personal and professional data; the use of data in the workplace; concerns of surveillance; everyday security dilemmas, accessibility and availability of data for innovation and beyond. Furthermore, we aim to demonstrate the value of creative methodologies in exploring complex phenomena and to provide an innovative experience for all participants.

References

Asprion et al, 2020. Exploring Cyber Security Awareness Through LEGO Serious Play Part I: The Learning Experience. Management, 20, p. 22

Coles-Kemp, L., Jensen, R.B. and Heath, C.P., 2020, April. Too much information: questioning security in a post-digital society. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-14).

de Saille, S., Greenwood, A., Law, J., Ball, M., Levine, M., Vallejos, E.P., Ritchie, C. and Cameron, D., 2022. Using LEGO® SERIOUS® Play with stakeholders for RRI. Journal of Responsible Technology, 12, p.100055.

Hall, Heath & Coles-Kemp, 2015. Critical Visualisation and rethinking how we visualise risk and security, Journal of Cyber Security, 1 (1), pp 93-108

Rashid et al, 2020. Everything is Awesome! Or is it? Cyber Security Risks in Critical Infrastructure, In Critical Information Infrastructure Security: 14th International Conference, CRITIS 2019.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a pervasive phrase today, often used to describe a wide range of technologies, including large language models/deep learning image processing, augmented reality, and systems that can generate text, imagery, audio and synthetic data. Ubiquitous and yet novel, AI is rapidly advancing academic research, influencing not only its outcomes but also its praxis. What are the current uses of AI in internet research? What is the impact of AI on internet research practices? What are the ethical implications of such use and how should we, as members of a research community, attend to these? The focus of this workshop is to address these questions by providing an opportunity to examine and discuss the use of AI in research and its impact on research practices and ethics. This is a stand-alone workshop but its outcomes will partner well with the proposed afternoon workshop “AoIR Ethics: Where Do We Go from Here?”

AI-powered tools are intended to advance all stages of the academic research process, from aggregating and summarizing extant literature, to generating and collecting data, to the writing and visualization of results. Institutional guidance on using AI in each of these stages is slowly emerging, often in support of the use of such tools in a ‘responsible and ethical manner,’ but lacking detail on the research-specific considerations that should be made. In a similar vein, publishers have issued directives requiring acknowledgement of the use of AI in research reporting, but frequently do not opine on the ethical use of such tools. To address this lacuna, this workshop will focus on the ethics and literacies involved in the use of AI-powered tools in the research process.

This half-day workshop will be organized in three modules, and begin with opening remarks from Dr. Casey Fiesler (tentatively accepted invitation; https://caseyfiesler.com/about/), who will lay the groundwork for the session by describing current uses of AI in research and the associated ethical implications. The second module will proceed with small group work in which participants will address cases and provocations solicited in advance from members of the AoIR Ethics Working Committee and broader AoIR community, covering such topics as the use of generative tools for writing and data visualization, developing AI models to detect patterns and features in data, the use of AI-generated synthetic data, the implications of AI tools for data privacy and property rights, and the use of virtual and augmented reality in experimental settings. Finally, the third module will offer guidance and strategies for enhancing AI literacy among researchers at all levels to aid in their understanding of the practical and ethical implications associated with the adoption and use of emerging AI technologies. Throughout the session, participants will be empowered to share their experiences with AI, along with any attendant questions and controversies they have encountered.

The workshop facilitators bring a range of experience with internet research and applying AI tools in research and classroom settings, designing programs for AI literacy, and addressing the ethical dimensions of new research tools and methodologies.

Participants: The AoIR Ethics Working Committee will work to recruit participants from the entire AoIR community.

Format: half-day workshop (morning)

The development of artificial intelligence (AI) systems and their deployment in society has given rise to serious ethical dilemmas and existential questions. The previously unimaginable scale, scope, and speed of mass harvesting of data, the black-boxed classification logics of the data, the exploitation of ghostworkers, and the discriminatory uses of the systems have brought up concerns that the AI systems reproduce and amplify social inequalities and reinforce the existing structures of power (see e.g. Benjamin, 2019; Gray & Suri, 2019; Crawford, 2021; Heilinger, 2022). Moreover, AI contributes in a significant way to the planetary crises, from the mining of raw minerals and massive energy consumption to the vast amount of e-waste (Perkins et al., 2014; Crawford, 2021; Taffel, 2023; de Vries, 2023). AI-generated images have flooded social media feeds (Kell, 2023; Lu, 2023), deeply impacting access to information, knowledge generation, and the spreading of misinformation (Partadiredja, Serrano & Ljubenkov, 2020; Whittaker et al., 2020). The lack of regulation and security concerns has led to policies to curtail GenAI use in news organisations and universities (Weale, 2023; WIRED, 2023). Due to these problems, the adoption of GenAI in academia needs careful and critical deliberation.

In the workshop, we engage in reflecting on the ways generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) could be used as a method for critical research, and what ethical and practical considerations are implied. We approach GenAI following Kate Crawford’s definition of AI as “a technical and social practice, institutions and infrastructures, politics and culture” (Crawford, 2021: pp. 8). The focus of the workshop is on GenAI (applications such as ChatGPT, Dall-E, Midjourney, Gemini) which use complex algorithms to learn from training data libraries and, when prompted by users, produce media outputs such as text, images, and sounds.

The concerns for critical researchers interested in using GenAI as a method are numerous: The development of the systems and applications has been widely driven and controlled by the tech industry. Their monopoly in the market means that the companies profit not only from the services they sell but also from the technological knowledge they produce (Baradaran, 2024). Simultaneously, the proprietary systems limit the choices for researchers and users, making it almost impossible to investigate the social and ecological sustainability of the systems or the ethics of their technical construction. Given the massive budget that the tech industry has spent in recent years and its exponential projections for the near future (e.g. Nienaber, 2024; Grace et al., 2024), it can be assumed that the mainstreaming of AI applications from predictive technologies to GenAI will continue their domestication to users’ everyday lives and different fields including administration, policing, health care, education, journalism, and academic research. Thus, there is a need for a deeper understanding of the entire AI system, and us as researchers thoroughly engaging in a process of self-reflection on what our role in it is and should be. In the workshop, we will address questions such as:

• How does GenAI reflect and produce social relations and understandings of the world? How do we unpack what is and is not meaningful to understand in the datasets and classifications?

• What are the political economies of the construction of AI systems? What are the wider planetary consequences? How should researchers address these issues when working with GenAI?

• How can we resist the hegemonic and often naturalised narratives of the AI industry and provide alternatives with critical research? How can critical researchers engage in decolonising AI systems?

• How can critical research interventions participate in the radical reimagining of AI's technological development and role in society?

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We invite everyone interested in the topic (no previous experience with GenAI is required) to come and explore possibilities and concerns of using GenAI in research, share ideas, identify alternatives, experiment with a GenAI method, and network. The full-day workshop will consist of three interlinked parts. In the morning, we review some of the central questions collaboratively using the method of ’a world café’ (https://theworldcafe.com), followed by a summary of the key concerns in the field of critical GenAI research. After lunch, the participants have a chance to experiment with a workshop method developed by the facilitators in which an AI image generator is used to imagine sustainable digital futures. Organisers of the workshop will provide tablets with the GenAI application. In the final session, we share reflections and further elaborate on the method experiment, discuss the needs and concerns for critical research, and have space for networking and exchanging ideas. The maximum number of participants in the workshop is 24.

Organizers: Robyn Caplan (Duke University) and João C. Magalhães (University of Groningen).

Participants: Meredith Clark (Northeastern University), Laura Manley (Harvard University), Heidi Tworek (University of British Columbia), Christian Katzenbach, Dennis Redeker, and Daria Dergacheva (University of Bremen).

Duration: Full-day workshop.

We are at a critical juncture for the future study of platforms and other Internet infrastructure. Researchers who study platforms have always had difficulties navigating access. As noted by Bonini and Gandini (2020), it is not just the proprietary algorithms owed by technology that are “black boxed,” but rather the industry itself. While there was a brief period between 2016 and 2018 where technology companies appeared to open themselves up for external researchers to conduct ethnographic work or interviews, access to these companies remains rare and is increasingly limited. Quantitative data are also becoming scarcer, as major platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) and Reddit have made their platforms more difficult to study, severely limiting free-API access for researchers (Gilbert and Geurkink, 2024), or eliminating free access altogether (Gotfredsen, 2023).

In this context, the need for building and maintaining alternative archives about platforms becomes urgent. Indeed, a number of scholars have been dealing with these problems by creating their own archives, circumventing platforms and asking people to do things like donate their own data, such as Meredith Clark’s Archiving Black Twitter project (https://www.archivingtheblackweb.org/); keeping track of public statements, such as Michael Zimmer and team’s Zuckerberg Files (​​https://zuckerbergfiles.org/); and collecting, curating, and giving access to sets of platform public documents such as the Platform Governance Archive (https://www.platformgovernancearchive.org/). For historians, meanwhile, questions of archives and access to documents have always been central. But these questions take on new meaning with born digital sources.

We are proposing a full-day workshop on alternative archives for platform governance research. Workshop participants’ include creatives of alternative archives, such as Meredith Clark (Northeastern University, Black Twitter Project), Laura Manley (Harvard University, Facebook Files), and Christian Katzenbach, Dennis Redeker, and Daria Dergacheva (University of Bremen, Platform Governance Archive). We will be joined by media historian Heidi Tworek (University of British Columbia) to guide us in thinking about what we need to be collecting now to study platforms ten, twenty-five, or fifty years from now.

The workshop will be split into two sessions of three hours each. In the first session, participants will explain their initiatives, unpacking the methods they developed to both create their archives and circumvent (or not) the roadblocks they faced while doing so. Then, participants will discuss two main topics. Firstly, the politics of archiving, that is, how decisions around archiving and enabling access intersect with gender, race, and class, and with researchers’ own positionality. Secondly, the impact of alternative archives. In reflecting on who has used or not their archives and for what, participants will be invited to consider the concrete steps needed to make their work useful for multiple audiences. Throughout the workshop, we will ask participants to imagine the new types of archives we could create using the data they are collecting for their own research, including policy documents taken over time, screenshots from platforms of various points (i.e. version histories), oral histories, public statements, and other media coverage.

We hope the workshop can not only educate scholars (particularly young scholars) about the types of alternative archives already available, but that these scholars can be trained in how to create and share data as they progress through their work. The goal of this day is field-building, and identifying a common need to share resources to foster the development of platform governance research in the future. We invite scholars at every level who do work on existing platforms, as well as “dead and dying” platforms that are being lost to Internet history as they “fail, decline, or expire” (McCammon & Lingel, 2022).

This workshop builds on an event organized in June 2023 by the “Data & Society Institute” on “Access, Archives, and Workarounds”. This new version of the workshop is being hosted by the Platform Governance Research Network (PlatGovNet).

References

Bonini, T., & Gandini, A. (2020). The Field as a Black Box: Ethnographic Research in the Age of Platforms. Social Media + Society, 6(4). https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305120984477

Clark, M. (n.d.). Archiving Black Twitter. https://www.meredithdclark.com/archivingblacktwitter

Gilbert, S. & Geurkink, B. (2024). Why Reddit’s decision to cut off researchers is bad for its business—and humanity. Fastcompany. https://www.fastcompany.com/91014116/reddit-researchers-bad-for-business

Gotfredsen, S. G. (2023). Q&A: What happened to academic research on Twitter? Columbia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/qa-what-happened-to-academic-research-on-twitter.php

McCammon, M., & Lingel, J. (2022) Situating dead-and-dying platforms: technological failure, infrastructural precarity, and digital decline, Internet Histories 6(1-2). 10.1080/24701475.2022.2071395

Building on the momentum of three successful workshops – one online in 2021, and then two in person – this year we offer our fourth half-day undergraduate-teaching-focused workshop.

Teaching is central to many of our academic lives, whether we are graduate teaching assistants or junior or senior faculty members; tenure-track, tenured, or contingent; experienced educators or instructors relatively new to teaching. In the classroom (on campus or virtual), our students’ understandings of social media and internet use don’t always align with broader press or research narratives. Moreover, and in response to this year’s conference topic, as the mission of universities becomes ever more vocation-focused, our roles as educators often include preparing students for careers in "industry." University marketing material highlights the career opportunities for which undergraduates will be prepared, and there is a push to include ‘industry experiences’ within degrees.

This workshop brings educators together to discuss the difficulties and joys of teaching in, on, and around the internet. What do we learn from our students about the internet, how are we using the internet to teach, and what’s the best way of bringing AoIR research into our classrooms? How do we use the internet in teaching when our students don’t have broadband access, aren’t digitally-savvy, and when our institutions do not offer robust technical infrastructures or support? For what kinds of creative, information, or other industries are our students really prepared?

As professors with teaching experience that spans types of institutions, student populations, and institutional support, we understand that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions to teaching in ever-changing technological and social contexts. Also, and building on the last three years of workshops, this year’s workshop attends to our growing knowledge of the roles that teaching loads, expectations of service to students and administration, and institutional terminologies, and more differ around the world. For that reason, the workshop is discussion-based so we can all learn from, and with, one another.

This year's workshop will be held in-person in Sheffield, and registered participants are able to contribute their thoughts via a shared Google Doc. We will also allow a limited number of auditors to view the proceedings via Zoom or Teams.

We know from previous workshops that a minimum of 10 participants and a maximum of 25 is ideal for making the workshop both productive for participants and manageable for organizers. Prior to the workshop, participants fill out a questionnaire so that we have a sense of the teaching contexts and expectations of participants. We use the shared Google document as a resource that participants can refer to after the event.

We tailor the workshop to focus on experiences and resources brought forth in responses to the questionnaire and expand on them through discussion. The first hour focuses on introductions, and on outlining the key concerns, questions, and issues resulting from questionnaire responses. The second hour focuses on sharing strategies, assignments or techniques employed in teaching that center around digital media and internet research in a pedagogical setting. During the third hour, participants work in smaller groups, the topics of which are determined by workshop participants. Each participant joins the group that best addresses their needs and expectations. The fourth hour includes the summation of the group work and discussion of plans for documenting and sharing of strategies and materials that were discussed throughout the workshop.

The organizers intend to adhere strictly to the structure described above and to give participants substantive takeaways at the end of the workshop. One off-site organizer is managing the auditors and will enable their participation as time allows.

This workshop adheres to AoIR’s Statement of Principles and Statement of Inclusivity (https://aoir.org/diversity-and-inclusivity), which is a commitment to academic freedom, equality of opportunity, and human dignity, and which supports at its conferences “A civil and collegial environment rooted in a belief of equal respect for all persons. Such an environment, among other things, should encourage active listening and awareness of inappropriate or offensive language.”

Hostile responses to research on online communities: how can we safeguard researchers?

Half-day workshop

Suggested audience Researchers and research managers involved in the study of online communities. All levels of experience and expertise welcomed.

Workshop aims To discuss the risks involved when researchers study potentially hostile online communities and identify steps that research institutions can put in place to safeguard them

We are researchers at the University of Nottingham conducting a project on practices for effective, safe and responsible research on online communities. Our project is called ‘EFRESH’ and is being conducted in collaboration with the Internet Society. We believe that online communities are an essential topic of research focus. These communities provide a digital space for users with shared interests to meet. Researching how they are formed and organised helps us understand contemporary phenomena such as (online) identity formation, collective discourses and action, and the spread of (mis)information.

However, researchers in this area increasingly report experiencing a hostile response when researching online communities. This particularly occurs when the communities being studied share extreme/outsider viewpoints or behaviours – for instance, white supremacist groups, conspiracy theorist groups, cheating forums for online gamers, COVID denial forums etc. Members of these communities may react negatively to awareness of being studied and undertake actions such as:

• sending abusive/threatening messages to the researcher and/or the researcher’s family members;
• sharing personal information about the researcher online (doxing);
• creating embarrassing Photoshopped images of the researcher and sharing them online;
• making complaints to the researcher’s university;
• posting false information about the researcher online.

These actions are most likely to occur during data collection and the dissemination of findings. They are also most likely to occur in environments in which negative behaviours are normalised. Some platforms (e.g. Kiwi Farms, 4chan) have reputations for minimal content moderation and some communities incorporate the harassment of outsiders as part of their group identity. Junior researchers, female researchers, researchers of colour, and researchers in the LGBTQIA+ community are most vulnerable to these kinds of hostile responses. Experiencing them can cause psychological trauma and fatigue, as well as reputational damage. They can also delay the research and publication process, potentially harming researchers’ career progression.

The presence of these risks means it is necessary to safeguard researchers when they study online communities. Current literature shows that at present, researchers and research groups are often required to develop their own strategies for this, with little organised input or support from research institutions. In this interactive workshop we will explore steps we are taking in a current project to address this current absence of institutional-level support.

Using a range of research activities, we seek to identify best practices for researcher safeguarding during this research, particularly emphasising the need for institutions to acknowledge the extent of the problem and develop proactive strategies to protect researchers. We will use our findings to prepare safeguarding guidance to share across research institutions.

We welcome all researchers and research managers with an interest in this issue to join this workshop. We want to share our project findings with the internet research community in order to receive feedback on them and maximise the contribution they can make. The workshop will be highly interactive. We will present our emerging findings and draft institutional guidance and open them up for discussion. Break-out discussions will provide an opportunity to identify improvements to the guidance and strategies to promote their adoption across research institutions. We will also assess interest in a creating a joint report on the workshop for publication.

Proposed workshop outline

• Introductions, project overview, workshop overview
• Small group discussion activity: risks involved in the study of online communities. The scope and scale of the problem
• Presentation: project findings and draft guidance
• Small group discussion activity: reflecting on the guidance. What can be improved and what can be added?
• Plenary discussion: how can we encourage research institutions to acknowledge the issue and put appropriate safeguarding in place? Next steps for progress in this area.

Since the inception of the AoIR ethics guidelines, several adaptations have been made to accommodate emerging technological advancements and evolving research contexts (Ess, 2002; Markham & Buchanan, 2012; franzke et al. 2019; Zimmer, 2022). These advancements have incorporated important values of context sensitivity, cross-cultural awareness and research phase sensitivity into the guidelines, during a period in which internet-related technologies grew in prominence and research significance. More recently, internet researchers have faced new challenges stemming from the rise of generative artificial intelligence platforms, reduced access to data through more restrictive content-sharing/API policies, open hostility towards research on particular topics and communities, and threats of harm to researchers themselves. Such events require renewed discussion on how to strengthen and adapt the AoIR ethics guidelines to meet this developing environment.

In addition, more and more disciplines outside AoIR’s traditional communities rely on data and methods that would benefit from AoIR’s ethics guidance but are hindered by the inability to best apply our guidelines within their field. Meanwhile, new regulatory frameworks for research have fostered expanded implementations of the AoIR ethics guidelines, along with some disturbing reports of ‘ethics washing.’

To foster further dialogue and action on the future directions for the AoIR ethics guidelines–both in terms of content as well as how to disseminate to broader communities–the AoIR Ethics Working Group proposes this half-day pre-conference workshop to bring together all interested members of the AoIR community to discuss and organize how this work might be carried out.

The goals of this workshop will be to consider how the various AoIR ethics documents have been put into practice, to identify existing gaps and limitations, and to create an action plan for developing the next iteration of ethical guidance. In addition, this workshop will also contemplate the format of future guidelines, for example, whether they should be static documents, interactive decision-support tools, accompanied by instructional videos or case studies, and so on. We will consider the development of an outreach plan and accompanying materials. Modes of sharing resources related to teaching ethical approaches to the research and use of emerging technologies will also be discussed.

To facilitate the goals of the session, three distinct workshop blocks will be planned. The first block will include a general discussion of the existing AoIR ethical guidance and its adequacy to meet the needs of today’s research environment. Time permitting, this discussion will also include a brainstorming segment on the research challenges that participants are currently facing. The second workshop block will include a strategy session to deliberate and develop a plan to address how the guidelines might be further adapted to incorporate the emergence of artificial intelligence technologies as they are used in research praxis. The third workshop block will have a tactical focus, developing priorities for a new iteration of the AoIR ethics guidelines, development of an outreach plan along with accompanying materials, and the identification of any additional extensions requiring development or elaboration. The primary outcome of this workshop will be an action plan for the next iteration of the AoIR ethics guidelines.

Participants: The AoIR Ethics Working Committee will work to recruit participants from the entire AoIR community.

Format: half-day workshop (afternoon)

Introduction

Like other organizations, universities are actively investigating the ways in which generative AI and large learning models can be integrated into their work. Initial concern over plagiarism and cheating has been joined by opportunities to personalize learning, to automate administrative and instructional processes, and perhaps most importantly to help individuals and organizations make use of these new technologies in ethical ways. Many universities--including that of the facilitators--are seeking to rapidly adopt and proliferate these nascent technologies, often in partnership with existing and emerging commercial providers. Earlier this year, Arizona State University entered into an agreement with OpenAI to provide a site license for ChatGTP Enterprise, and is actively implementing this into instruction, research, and administration. However, there are significant potential pitfalls in this new gold rush. For example, universities may fail to prioritize the safety and privacy of users (including those in vulnerable positions), or consider the potential dangers or deleterious effects of experimenting with these approaches. Universities must contend with the complex and troublesome political economy of these tools, in addition to their environmental consequences. And, universities must consider how adoption of these technologies creates ontological problems in terms of regimes of truth and expertise. Given that the ways universities engage in these new technologies are likely to act as a template for wider adoption, getting it right in these contexts is important.

We are at an inflection point. There is a limited window during which technology scholars can shape the deployment of these tools before they become obdurate (Pfaffenberger, 1992, p. 498). During a period when there are more questions than answers about how the use of these technologies affect legal structures, government action, and the structure and function of industries and knowledge work, there is a desperate need for scholars of technology to contextualize these changes against a broader history of technology adoption, to weigh the ethical challenges they present, and to act as a counterweight to calls to, once again, move fast and break things. To help build a network of scholars interested in shaping this inflection point, we propose a half-day preconference on AI, Ethics, and The University at AoIR.

Attendees & Organization

Many AoIR attendees are likely to be involved in how AI is being used at their own universities already, or wish to play a more active part in that work. Our aim is to gather these voices to share experiences, stances, and aims. By the end of the preconference we hope to have established a set of shared core questions we should be addressing as scholars and public intellectuals, and a way forward for establishing frameworks for adoption, appropriate restrictions on data collection and use, and guidelines for adoption within the university and how universities may leverage their social position to shape the ways in which publics, governments, and industry use AI

Attendance is open to all AoIR delegates. We will contact registrants ahead of the workshop and ask participants to provide answers to a short set of questions, along with a brief position statement. The facilitators will then use this initial information to organize a set of guided conversations.

We anticipate discussion points may include:

* In what ways may stakeholders in AI-mediated contexts be better informed about the ways in which their creative efforts can be used and misused by generative AI systems?

*How do we appropriately indicate our use of new AI tools in our own work as faculty, students, or administrators in ways that are easily discoverable?

*How might those stakeholders be better represented in decisions related to the adoption of AI systems?

* When should students or faculty be able to choose to use AI tools and what are the conditions under which they may choose not to use these tools?

* If contracting with commercial suppliers of AI, to what degree can and should we insist on elements of transparency, portability, intellectual property, privacy, and control?

What role should universities play in promoting non-commercial alternatives to various forms of artificial intelligence?

How best might we explore the possibilities of new AI technologies within constrained spaces before adopting them at scale?

Should universities play an important role in modeling ethical adoption and non-adoption of AI tools, and how do we better document and communicate these processes and their value to industry and to policymakers?

How could universities take a leadership role in evaluating AI systems for more than simply perceived performance? What non-performance related success measures should be taken into account when evaluating AI systems?

AoIR provides an ideally situated space in which to share these efforts and engage in coordination with global partners. Our aim is to close the workshop with a roadmap to move toward a collective or consensus statement that may be shared more widely.

Work Cited

Pfaffenberger, B. (1992). Social anthropology of technology. Annual review of Anthropology, 21(1), 491-516.

As both a field and concept, algorithmic resistance has emerged out of critical data studies to reintroduce explorations of human agency and autonomy into research concerning the deleterious impact of automated governance systems in society. Whilst this growing body of literature has invaluably illustrated how different communities work with algorithms through gaming and manipulation to resist automated governance, its focus has generally been delimited to investigating employment and labour conditions primarly experienced by the ‘precariat’ class (Standing, 2011). This specific focus has hitherto foreclosed opportunities to explore what can be learned from nascent practices of engagement with algorithmic technologies across a wider range of contexts, and specifically how these new practices can shape the ways that we live and work with data in the future (Kennedy, 2018; Velkova and Kaun, 2021).

This paper extends the critical focus of algorithmic resistance studies towards organisations that understand themselves as prefiguring more egalitarian futures within the tech industry. This is achieved by drawing from interview data and supporting document analysis of grey papers conducted with an activist organisation that has developed an alternative, democratic data governance system, together with a database of human judgments intended for use in future transparent artificial intelligence projects. Through exploring this primary data, this paper outlines how these nascent data practices can be conceptualised as a mode of cultural resistance that draws from historical conceptions of subjectivity, data and the internet to work towards more egalitarian and just data futures.

Users sit at the heart of the global platform economy. Their movements, from one destination to another, can therefore have major economic, political, and cultural consequences. Using the 2022 Twitter to Mastodon migration as a case study, this presentation aims to rethink social media migration (SMM). The Mastodon migration was a significant social media event – as reflected in news coverage (see Chan, 2022; Hoover, 2022; Huang, 2022; Kiderlin, 2022) – but what kind of event was it and how should we understand its significance? While there is a small interdisciplinary literature on SMM, our presentation offers the first theory of social media migration as a distinct, general phenomenon, and argues SMM can be understood as a form of user-power. That is, SMM is one way users consciously act as political collectives in response to the perceived “decline” (Hirschman, 1990) of a platform or related social media form.

We begin with a brief overview of existing studies of SMM to show how movements of large user populations across sites, forums and platforms have been conceptualised in the past. We then offer an empirical study of the Twitter-Mastodon migration, combining a survey of 820-odd Mastodon users with a quantitative study of 1,286 user accounts who self-identified as migrating. We use this empirical study to reinterpret the pre-existing literature and propose a theory of social media migration that includes six elements: a triggering event; a dynamic of decline; collective introspection; platform/site consciousness; migration as user-power; and inward/outward transformation.

The debates between Afro-optimism and pessimism are among the most energetic and robust conversations happening in Black online intellectual communities. Yet, the binary formation of Afro-optimism and Afro-pessimism obfuscates the ways that Black folks have engaged with given narratives and technologies of the West. In this essay, I offer Afro-Skepticism as a possible affective substrate of the relationship between Blackness and information technologies that lies in the long-standing debate between Black-optimism and Afro-pessimism. Using critical technocultural discourse analysis (CTDA) to engage the multitude of social media interfaces, their uses, and significant cultural practices, along with an analysis of Black activists’ online discussion, hashtag campaign #YourSlipIsShowing, an initiative started by Black feminists Shafiqah Hudson and I’Nasah Crockett during the height of the Black Lives Matter zeitgeist and the years leading into the 2016 presidential campaign. The women of #YourSlipisShowing demanded a pause in the marching drum, which framed the utility of social media as a salve for the issues of diversity and inclusion in the public sphere. However, discarding digital platforms as hellspaces discards the platforms' usefulness for creating joy, community, and organizing found on the platforms. The framing of Afro-skepticism has value because it provides a space for refusal that allows for paced vetting of emergent technologies, such as AI and other computational technologies to come, and a clear-eyed acknowledgment of past inventions’ exploitative impact on Black life and the anxiety that this causes. This work contributes to discussions of Black technoculture and disinformation studies.

The Lee Luda controversy was a pivotal moment that inaugurated nationwide discourses surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) ethics in South Korea. As a conversational chatbot designed to simulate lifelike conversations, Lee Luda quickly gained attention for its human-like interaction capabilities but soon became the center of controversy due to its use of private human conversations for training, leading to unintended disclosures of personal details and generating responses filled with hate speech and sexual content manipulation. This incident led to the suspension of the service in three weeks.

This paper explores the aftermath of the Lee Luda incident, focusing on the emerging landscape of AI ethics in South Korea. It analyzes the instructional discourses and values foregrounded across different institutions through a critical discourse analysis of two sets of ethical guidelines developed in response to the controversy. Drawing upon critical AI studies and feminist data studies, the study examines how capitalist influences and corporate interests shape the ethical framing of AI technology, highlighting the complex interplay between regulatory initiatives and corporate practices.

The incident underscores the broader struggle to define the ethical boundaries of AI technology, reflecting the tension between technological advancement and ethical responsibility. This tension shapes the nation's sociotechnical imaginary, a concept that captures the intertwined dynamics of science, technology, and societal aspirations. The paper argues that the Lee Luda case exemplifies a shift toward a more democratic and sustainable sociotechnical imaginary in South Korea, challenging conventional technological developmentalism and reflecting a broader societal reflection on AI ethics and governance.

Artificial Intelligence (AI), often hailed as a transformative force, has become an ambivalent buzzword, simultaneously promising utopian possibilities and fueling dystopian anxieties. Social media platforms have emerged as pivotal spaces where the public narrative about AI takes shape, especially through content creators, significantly influencing our collective vision of the future with AI. Therefore, this paper inquires into the role of creators in shaping public imaginaries of AI through their AI content. The paper is based on TikTok as a site of entrance for investigating the role of creators in shaping ongoing discourses around AI through short video content. To understand the role of creators within this ongoing AI discourse, a hashtag network analysis is paired with a critical discourse analysis of creators’ AI content. The preliminary results show three dominant genres of AI content based on 1) AI tools output, especially visual content, 2) listicles on AI tools for different tasks, and 3) educational and critical AI content. Considering the creator types behind the content, a high amount of content is produced by content farms followed by tech TokTokers. Media outlets and commentary TikTokers dominate the third content section. Overall, four types of AI imaginaries are foregrounded. AI mystification envisions AI as fast-paced and inherently life-changing. Similarly, AI futuristic content makes AI out as inevitable. Contrastingly, a high AI pragmatism is prevalent in the ongoing tool discourse, while critical and educational content counteracts these imaginaries with a strong AI realism highlighting the complex and nuanced aspect of AI.

The world today is awash with narratives of artificial intelligence (AI) as an "inevitable," "unstoppable" force destined to "revolutionize" society. Using the concept of "entanglement" from Black and Indigenous feminist science, technology, and society studies, we provide a critical examination of the AI industry's complex intersections with sociopolitical dynamics, technological determinism, and oppression. Instead of viewing AI advancement as a predetermined path, we show how this perspective is socially constructed and has dire consequences for the environment and society alike, especially for marginalized communities in the global and local Souths.

Using discourse analysis and critical quantitative techniques, we analyze the discourses surrounding AI, examining over 1,200 pieces of digital content to show how language shapes both technology's development and our collective imaginations. By tracing the ideological roots of AI back to colonial and eugenic practices, we demonstrate the industry's deep entanglement with interlocking systems of oppressions.

This paper analyzes the global English-language press coverage of generative AI app Lensa and finds that it echoes existing technological discourses, focusing on the app’s predatory data practices, the biased content it produced, and the user behaviors associated with it. I argue that this coverage provides evidence of discursive closure (Deetz, 1992; Leonardi & Jackson, 2003; Markham, 2021) around both the risks and the potential of visual generative AI in a manner that supports the maintenance of the status quo. I also suggest that the press coverage of Lensa, which both articulates key AI-related harms and frames those harms as intractable and insolvable, creates a discourse of inevitability (Leonardi & Jackson, 2003; Markham, 2021) that has implications for how these issues are understood by the public, and for the approaches that are taken to address them.

Digitalization processes are increasingly associated with intensified domination. Scholars have unearthed how tech companies exert unprecedented power in the economic field through new modes of accumulation, production, and control. Less attention has been paid to the dominant groups operating digital capitalism. It remains largely unexplored what kind of class-specific subjectivities characterize the upper echelons of the tech industry. This article addresses this gap through an analysis of the entrepreneurial gaze of the tech elite. Drawing on a unique data set from Y Combinator, a prominent Silicon Valley-based “accelerator” that mentors early-stage entrepreneurs, the study explores how the ideal tech entrepreneur is discursively constructed. Three central schemas are identified: (1) need-spotting through personal experiences; (2) a faithful vision; and (3) a short-cut orientation. While outlining these socially-organized ways of seeing the world, the article reveals how they not only incentivize exploitative political-economic structures but also enable processes of elite class reproduction.

This paper discusses the mediated policing of ‘indebtedness’ narratives espoused by immigrant-political influencers towards their host country and people, as a form of valorised self-regulation and self-assessment with regards to the extent and effectiveness of assimilation — of both themselves and perceived fellow immigrant others. Simultaneously, it explores social media platforms as a space for negotiation between immigrant self-regulation and policing efforts positioned as ‘from home’.

As a case study, I conducted critical discourse analysis of posts and comments on social media platforms (Instagram, X, YouTube) around the 2024 Taiwanese Presidential elections. I focus on the posts made and shared by political influencers, or ‘micro-celebrities’, who are Hong Kong immigrants in Taiwan. Concurrently, attention is placed on linked posts or comments by users self-presented as based in and/or from Hong Kong.

Drawing from the intersections of citizenship, media, and migration studies, I argue how ideas around ‘indebtedness’ function to mould immigrants in accordance to particular valorised and ethnicised national subjects, with abjecting and othering implications. I show how emotive ‘indebtedness’ is incorporated into understandings of civic practices that demarcate worthy members of the host society. The policing of ‘indebtedness’ from both proximate and distant political influencers is positioned as an attempt to delimit the abjected immigrant — the spoilt and incompatible ‘bad egg’ that ruins the life chances of everyone else.

The recent widespread availability of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology and the extensive records of human activities and behaviour in digital format present serious challenges related to how individuals construct their own identities and social relations. AI systems datafy our body and our sense of self, producing a new cartography of biopower (Foucault, 1982) and a new form of the political economy of subjectivation (Langlois & Elmer, 2019) that treats individuals as objects from which raw material is extracted to produce predictive models that act as our data doubles (Haggerty & Ericson, 2000). Issues such as algorithmic social biases (Bolukbasi et al., 2016), the idealized and pragmatic economic uses of AI (Srnicek, 2017), and the consequent reproduction of already existing power structures by predictive models (Crawford, 2021) have been problematized in the literature. This paper asks what kinds of data and labour mobilization occur in and around the production of predictive models: What political economy and socio-technical conditions are involved in the production of AI? How do these conditions produce predictive models that shape our sense of self and identity? Focusing on Kaggle, a platform for crowdsourcing AI development, I use digital methods and a software studies approach to examine the practices of the data science community on three high-profile machine learning projects and conclude by arguing that machine learning has been thought of and developed as a prediction of the self in order to prescribe individual behaviour to fulfill specific economic conditions.

This study delves into the digital identity formation of vendors and customers on darknet drug trade sites, focusing on Cebulka, the largest Polish-language cryptomarket. Recently, we have seen a rise in interest in studying online drug trade. Despite this growing attention, research on how individuals present themselves online and construct their identities in dark web environments remains relatively scarce. Through a dual-stage methodology combining conventional content analysis (CCA) of 8170 posts and in-depth interviews with users (n=10), this study explores how Cebulka’s users curate their online personas. The findings reveal that vendors employ sophisticated marketing strategies, emphasizing product quality to build brand identity. Consumers, in turn, contribute by sharing detailed feedback. All these practices foster a community of informed users who view themselves as superior to traditional street-level traders and clear web (social media) users. This self-perception extends to a belief in their enhanced knowledge and quasi-expertise concerning drugs, a distinction from conventional drug users, and a separation between their online and real-life identities. The study illustrates that these digital personas are collectively shaped, drawing on social identity theory and performance theories to understand the platform’s behavior and interactions. This research not only bridges a gap in understanding the complex dynamics of darknet drug trading but also offers insights into the broader subculture of drug users, suggesting distinct identifications and identities among those active on the dark web. It challenges traditional views of drug traders and has implications for harm reduction and policy development.

Craft and craft making are typically associated with the material, the handmade, and the organic, both in terms of its products and the labour involved in their creation. Craft goods and imaginaries, though, are increasingly imbricated in digital spaces through commercial sites such as Etsy, Taobao, and Instagram, but also as the principles of craft labour align with those of digital entrepreneurship (Bell et al., 2021). The papers in this panel will explore what happens when practices associated with craft and craft making - broadly intended - intersect with the digital economy. Drawing on a variety of perspectives, different platforms, and diffuse geographies, we engage with the dynamics of craft making in diverse ways to foreground the relationship between craft and the artisanal, on the one hand, and the computational spaces of the digital industries, on the other.

This panel is an important contribution as craft is an often overlooked part of the economy because of its association with domesticity, feminised labour, and/or the “pre-industrial” economic margins. Yet, in the aftermath of the 2007-08 economic crisis and, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic, it was craft that absorbed a new demand for work meaningfulness, as an alternative to unemployment or even the gateway to a new ‘good life,’ based on a return to material work (Gandini and Gerosa, 2023). At the same time craft has become big business in the global platform economy, as a swathe of content creators engage in craft-related endeavours, intersecting with regimes of ethical consumption in the global North. This industrialisation also corresponds with growing opportunities for income-generating activity within marginalised economic contexts as platforms, tools, and types of profitable work proliferate. Consequently, the labour, economic, and social dynamics that animate craft as a commercial activity resonate beyond the specific arenas of the handmade and the artisanal, and have become key components of what has been argued to be an emergent ‘industrious modernity’ (Arvidsson, 2019) characterised by new geographies of work and life. This panel has been brought together to fill a gap about the relationship between craft imaginaries and practices and studies of digital industries, the platform economy, and online culture.

The first paper explores the ‘discursive materiality’ that characterises neo-craft work, taken as a new form of post-industrial craft work typical of Western economies with specific distinctive features. Based on a combination of digital methods and qualitative research on neo-craft work in the EU context, the paper illustrates this process of ‘discursive materiality’, showing its paradoxical nature as well as its intricate - and critical - relationship with the broader logics of platformisation of culture (Poell et al., 2021). The second paper explores the commercial activity of Tiktok content creators as an articulation of the principles that animate contemporary understandings of craft and craft labour. Drawing on interviews with creators located outside of global economic centres, it draws links between the principles of the artisanal hipster craft economy and the entrepreneurial logics that animate their digital labour, suggesting a logic beyond “instafame” as a key driver. The third paper, though, counters this proposition. Drawing on an extensive study of digital bazaars in India, this paper identifies the street level innovations of digital goods sellers, including their use of digital payment and management systems. It questions the extent to which the craft metaphor as articulated in global north contexts can be extended to this work. The final paper returns us to the world of craft goods retailing - in this instance, the online retailer Etsy - and questions of platformisation. It seeks to answer the question of how to understand the labour status of these platform traders. Focusing on the concerns raised through the strike by Etsy sellers in April 2022, it systematically works through different approaches to answer the question of whether these craft makers can be considered workers.

References

Arvidsson, A. (2019). Changemakers: The industrious future of the digital economy. London: Wiley & Sons.

Bell, E., Dacin, M. T., & Toraldo, M. L. (2021). Craft imaginaries–past, present and future. Organization Theory, 2(1), DOI: 2631787721991141.

Gandini, A., & Gerosa, A. (2023). What is ‘neo-craft’work, and why it matters. Organization Studies, DOI: 01708406231213963.

Poell, T., Nieborg, D. B., & Duffy, B. E. (2021). Platforms and cultural production. London: Wiley & Sons.

The industry of sextech is on the rise. But while the term sextech has been applied to a wide range of intimate technologies, it is often understood in terms of technologies that enhance or improve sex in an individualist manner. This panel instead furthers an understanding less concerned with sexuality as a question of technological optimisation, and more invested in sextech as technologies, not only for pleasure and health, but also for regulation, surveillance, and biopolitical management. We explore the growth of the sextech industry and its relationships to surveillance capitalism, artificial intelligence, data governance, and politics of pleasure. Drawing from empirical data with sextech users, retailers, developers, and founders as well as collaborations between industry and academia, the papers explore how sextech industries outsource labour, upscale automation, and shape intimate connections through digital technologies. While we consider the interplay of sextech and public health, we do not seek to evaluate the therapeutic utility of sextech use. Instead, we adopt a sociotechnical approach, reflecting on how cultural assumptions around gender, sexuality, health, and pleasure guide and inform sextech markets. The panel is structured by moving from broad interrogations of the issues within the sex tech industry to case studies of specific platforms, before finishing with a consideration of user experiences of queering sextech to explore some possible futures. In these case studies, focusing on industry practices allows us to see how sextech is marketed as simultaneously sexually empowering, a source of self-knowledge, and a solution for social inequality and injustice.

The artificial intelligence (AI) sector is experiencing rapid growth, with a projected market size of $1.3 trillion by 2032 according to industry reports. The landscape shifted significantly with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, prompting major players like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, alongside popular apps such as TikTok and Snapchat, to make substantial investments in AI. There has been an influx of new AI products and updates, reshaping the industry’s structure and scale. Additionally, there has been a surge in acquisitions and investments in AI startups, particularly by Big Tech firms. Furthermore, partnerships between AI and major tech companies have proliferated, solidifying their dominant positions. In fact, as Kak and Myers West succinctly state, ‘There is no AI without Big Tech’, raising critical issues around industry concentration and the political economy of AI.

This panel posits that the driving force behind these transformative shifts is the evolution of AI as a platform. This evolution effectively propels the platformisation of AI, facilitating the integration of AI across diverse industry sectors. The resultant ‘industrialisation’ of AI marks the expansion of AI systems across various sectors and industries, triggering investments in necessary computational resources and posing challenges for governing AI. In short, this underscores that AI is much more than just a standalone application or tool, such as ChatGPT; it is a foundational technical system that underpins a broad array of apps and services.

In this context, the panel recognises the recent ‘infrastructural turn’ in media and internet studies, deliberately steering away from speculative discussions about the future impacts of AI. Instead, the emphasis shifts towards a focus on the ‘mundanity and ordinariness of existing systems’. This highlights the importance of studying the foundational infrastructure, tools, and frameworks that shape AI development. Furthermore, it requires an understanding of the associated supply chains, investments, acquisitions, forms of ownership and support, control mechanisms, and the broader political economy surrounding AI. Such perspectives have been developed, for example, to study AI’s industry relations in healthcare, the global digital marketing and advertising industries, journalism, or the automotive industry.

The panellists examine how AI may be viewed as a platform, presenting critical perspectives on the platformisation of AI and its implications for industry relations and the media landscape. Through four distinct studies, they highlight: (1) the influence of platforms on the emerging AI ecosystem and their consolidation of power through reliance on cloud infrastructure, (2) the evolution of cloud infrastructure in the political economy of AI, (3) the actualisation of AI as a platform with ‘general-purpose’ applications, and (4) how challenges in machine vision shape innovation in AI. Each contribution revolves around a central question: How is AI, particularly within the AI sector, evolving under the influence of platform logic? In doing so, the panellists offer valuable insights informed by platform theory and methodologies, exploring their relevance for a comprehensive examination of AI and the broader AI sector. Furthermore, their perspectives provide methodological insights into understanding the material conditions and critical political economy of AI as a platform.

Collectively, these studies seek to advance the critical discourse on AI and its political economy, with a specific emphasis on the AI industry. They shed light on the evolving landscape of AI industry relations and dependencies within the platform ecosystem, tracing how these relationships have transformed over time.

The internet has transformed the dissemination and reception of scientific information, creating unique opportunities and challenges for public science. This panel explores the impact of digitally mediated communication on public perceptions of science, focusing on the proliferation of misinformation, conspiracy theories, and science politicization in online spaces. Drawing from diverse disciplinary perspectives, including communication, information science, and history, our panelists describe how various aspects of the digital influence public (mis)understandings of science.

First, they discuss the epistemological nuances of preprint servers, retracted articles, and clickbait journalism, highlighting the need for a framework of scientific and digital literacy. They then explore how intermediaries like Wikipedia and social media facilitate scientific controversies, from Y2K to 5G, that circulate within scientific publics and counterpublics. Finally, they consider the challenges of using retractions to correct flawed science in an environment characterized by politicized scientific distrust. By elucidating these digital dynamics, the panel aims to inform the larger discussion of the public relevance of reliable scientific information in the face of politicized attacks on science.

Twitch is the largest social live-streaming platform in the Global North, and has historically been an important advertising and community hub for the gaming industry (Johnson & Woodcock, 2018). Twitch’s owner, Amazon, demands increasing growth and profit (Yin-Poole, 2024), so the platform must continue attracting new streamers, viewers, and advertisers. However, these new audiences may be at odds with Twitch’s core base of white, Asian, cisgender men (see Cote, 2020). This means many of Twitch’s policies and attempts at platform governance are often implemented inconsistently or in an ad-hoc manner, leading to greater confusion about what is and isn’t permissible on the platform (Winslow, 2024). Platform governance, also known as content moderation, harkens to how “platforms don’t make content, but they will make important choices about that content; what they will distribute and to whom, how they will connect users and broker their reactions, and what they will refuse” (Gillespie, 2018, pp. 254-255). As Twitch struggles to grow its audience but remains faithful to its core base, questions emerge as to who may be experiencing unfair moderation practices.

How does inconsistency become an institution? Here, we examine platform governance and moderation on Amazon’s Twitch.tv as a cultural practice. Through case studies and thematic analysis, we showcase moments of regulatory inconsistency that are constitutive of how Twitch manages harm. Our analysis identifies contexts, temporalities, and violence as critical themes for identifying Twitch’s inconsistent moderation. We offer a playbook for better understanding live streaming platform governance as an iterative process which frequently targets vulnerable streamers.

We applied thematic analysis to two case studies to document how regulatory inconsistencies are directed at historically marginalized streamers. These cases include Twitch’s response to: 1) Kai Cenat’s impromptu community meet-up which was labeled a riot by the NYPD and 2) When Twitch modified their clothing and attire policy three times in one month to curtail the so-called ‘topless meta’, where a handful of women staged their cleavage to imply full nudity and optimize viewer engagement.

In order to sustain a bustling livestreaming ecosystem, platforms have implemented monetization strategies such as monthly subscriptions and virtual gifts. Existing literature has examined how creators and platforms jointly navigate monetization for economic stability (Caplan & Gillespie, 2020; Kopf, 2020; Rieder et al., 2023), and how creator labor is driven by precarity and neoliberal promises of entrepreneurial success (Panneton, 2023; Duffy et al., 2021). Yet despite increasing interest in the creator-platform relationship, there remains a dearth of scholarship surrounding platform users. Thus, by analyzing the purchase behavior of livestream viewers, this paper answers the following: 1) how has the livestreaming industry and its audience mutually reinforced an attention economy predicated on financial capital? 2) How has platform monetization reshaped intimacy and visibility? And 3) what are the consequences of these structures on digital participation and class stratification?

Utilizing YouTube and Twitch as sites of analysis, this study employs semiotic interface analysis (Brock, 2018) and non-participant observation. Results show that viewers are rewarded for purchases by being visually marked in the chat window, increasing the likelihood of being seen by livestreamers. I argue that platform monetization—by enabling visibility, social capital, and perceived intimacy—privileges viewers with greater economic capital and promotes class stratification. Rather than being forcibly imposed, however, the system is mutually supported by platforms and viewers because it fulfills their desires for profit and recognition, respectively. This study hence challenges us to grapple with the long-term consequences of reinforcing transactional relationships, and dissects access and identity within highly commodified platforms.

Webcam sex platforms have grown into a multi-billion industry over the past few decades and host large populations of performers. Success on these platforms is often framed in terms of appearing higher in the algorithmically ranked performance list on their homepage. However, among webcam performers, focusing on a smaller, niche audience is a recognized strategy. This suggests that financial success on these platforms takes a variety of forms and manifests beyond merely ‘ranking higher’.

To better understand the different ways the platform affords financial success for its performers, we collected public ranking, viewership and tip data from Chaturbate, one of the largest camming platforms, over a two-week period in July 2022. We use an array of analysis techniques and arrive at three preliminary findings. Firstly, we find a pronounced winners-take-all distribution of tips on Chaturbate, strongly correlating with viewership and homepage ranking. Secondly, we identify low-ranking performers with substantial earnings, suggesting viable paths to sustainable income beyond seeking front-page visibility. Thirdly, we uncover niche-visibility areas linked to specific labels and tags, where performers often rely on small numbers of generous tippers, or 'whales'.

Our findings reinforce previous academic observations concerning the competitive environment in webcam sex as well as creator industries at large. Yet, we also discern alternative income-generation strategies beyond high homepage ranking. However, the strong reliance on whale tippers within more niche areas of content underscores the precarity in the industry, and the fact that performers ultimately remain dependent on a combination of platform affordances and viewer attention.

This paper contributes to theories of platform power and governance by expanding the lens to climate as a domain for standard-setting and corporate governance by digital platforms. The role of digital platform industries in climate governance speaks to the ways that digital platforms use their position as “critical intermediaries” to enhance their de facto regulatory power in the marketplace. I ask: how is the move into climate issues affecting the concentration of platform power, and what does the platformization of climate governance reveal about the cultural production of trust for digital platforms? I build on existing knowledge of the role that corporations have sought to play in climate governance as well as scholarship about societal trust in digital platform companies in order to examine the affects of platform capitalism as they are deployed to address the global climate future. This paper examines three case studies of digital platform climate governance: Amazon’s Climate Pledge projects, Google’s 24/7 Carbon-Free Energy Compact, and the online payment processing platform Stripe’s carbon accountability initiative Frontier. All three initiatives focus on the platform’s own corporate climate accountability, as well as aim to govern those of other businesses, including clients, suppliers, and competitors. However, they also exhibit variability in their strategies and affective branding logics. In looking at emergent climate governance by platform companies, I examine two-related levels – the explicit standards and mechanisms of corporate climate accountability, and the implicit cultural production of trust and faith in the beneficence and power of platforms that undergirds that project.

In this paper, we explore the visual echo chamber effect in climate change communication. We leverage the ongoing monitoring activities of both progressive actors and counter actor groups involved in the online public debate surrounding climate communication. Our focus is on whether visual content possesses unique characteristics that enable it to bridge ideologically diverse communities.

We do note a small amount of shared visual content. Interestingly, when we examine the emotional reactions elicited by this shared visual content, we find that they often diverge significantly, suggesting that pre-existing ideological positions heavily influence interpretation. This work contributes to our detailed understanding of the social

dynamics that create and sustain the online echo-chamber effect observed

in climate change debates.

This study embarks on a comprehensive exploration of sociolinguistic dynamics within the polarized climate change discourse on Facebook, focusing on the communicational patterns across pro-climate action and anti-climate action groups. Our research objectives mainly focus on (1) understanding the variation in language codes between pro-climate action and anti-climate action groups and (2) inspecting how these linguistic nuances are perceived by the respective audiences. For this goal, we curated a comprehensive list of relevant English-speaking actors, and we collected their most recent Facebook posts relevant to the climate change discourse. After that, the data were analyzed through multiple quantitative language register markers and some engagement-related metrics.

Through the analysis of the data, we identified some distinct language patterns among different sides of the debate, such as the tendency of the pro-climate action groups to resort to more scientific terms in their communication. Furthermore, audience responses to variation in the language register showed significant divergences among the two groups, with the pro-climate audience showing heightened sensitivity to shifts in language register.

Our findings highlight the importance of tailoring communication strategies to promote productive discussions within the polarized climate change debate.

Popular social media platform, TikTok, has been on the rise since its creation in 2018, and in its early days, it was used for partaking in dance trends and lip-syncing videos. Since, TikTok has become a place for a range of content including educational science videos and videos for various activist causes. Of particular interest for this paper is the prevalence of climate change-related videos on the app. Users across the globe have taken to TikTok to educate others on the impacts of climate change, voice their concerns and grievances around a lack of climate action, and promote climate activism. But this paper asks: what role does TikTok play in the mediation of climate communication? This question addresses the expansion of digital industries into every facet of society, including political, economic, and social discussions linked to an impending climate catastrophe. To answer this question, this paper employs the notion of platformisation to conceptualise the role of apps in the political economy of climate (Burgess, 2021; Helmond, 2015). Using the app walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018), this paper contributes to understandings of the infrastructure and affordances of TikTok in the context of climate change. It considers how the functionality of TikTok impacts the user’s affective experience of the app to question the role of digital industries in shaping climate imaginaries.

Concerns about the aging of the Chinese population (Y. Wang & Su, 2024), and with the Chinese government's acknowledgment of the silver-haired economy's significant development, there is an urgent need for research into the social media engagement of the elderly. Short videos, representing a novel form of information dissemination and social engagement, offer the elderly a means to connect across time and space (Zhang & Xiang, 2023). Short form video is dynamic and intuitive, making audio-visual information and public communication particularly accessible to older audiences. Notably, On 15th January 2024, the General Office of the State Council of China published the "Opinions on Developing the Silver Economy and Enhancing the Well-Being of the Elderly." This document marks the inaugural national policy directive specifically addressing the “Silver Economy” by the Chinese Government (Huang, 2024). The issuance of the Opinions policy underscores the critical role of the elderly demographic within the ambit of China's contemporary digital and cultural milieu, highlighting the government's commitment to integrating this segment of the population into the broader socio-economic framework.

However, existing research, both domestically and internationally, has predominantly examined the participation of older adults in short video platforms from the user perspective, often overlooking the significant number of older individuals actively contributing as content creators within the short video culture. Consequently, this research addresses this gap and is dedicated to examining the involvement of Chinese elderly individuals in the realm of short-form video culture, specifically as content creators.

Social media offer the opportunity for much public discourse, which also has the potential to spread misinformation far and wide. This study investigates how older adults respond to misinformation on social media and how older adults’ responses to encountering false information on social media vary by sociodemographic factors and digital skills. Based on survey data collected in 2023 from 2,000 adults ages 60+, we find that many users take a multifaceted approach to assessing false or misleading information on social media. Their most common strategies are checking the source and reading the comments for validation. These responses to misinformation highlight older adults’ active participation in information verification on social media.

The US, like many nations, faces what scholars and commentators have called a “crisis of care;” due to aging cohorts, a frayed social safety net, high costs of in-home care, and an underpaid, undervalued homecare workforce, care for the old is increasingly inaccessible (e.g., Abelson & Rios, 2023; Glenn, 2000). The eldercare technology, or “Age Tech,” industry has introduced myriad new technologies – positioning these developments as urgent solutions to the “care crisis.” Existing scholarship has examined how care workers and families navigate surveillant systems that mediate eldercare in the US (e.g., Glaser, 2021; Berridge et al., 2019) and how how technologists in Japan envision caring technologies as vehicles for family and state futures (Robertson, 2017; Wright, 2023), but there has been limited research on how professionals within the American “Age Tech” sector envision This study draws on ethnographic fieldwork with doctors, technologists, researchers, and entrepreneurs in the industry and analysis of extant materials to answer the following questions: How are organizational boundaries, particularly between healthcare and technology experts, established and maintained within this highly interdisciplinary sector? How do professionals define the problems that they are attempting to solve? When do these definitions come into conflict with one another? I argue that competing visions are often at play, even within the same organizations and within individual narratives – members of the “Age Tech” industry alternate between presenting themselves as savvy entrepreneurs tapping into the “longevity economy” and do-gooders providing a necessary service for a social ill.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) burst into media industries as a cheaper, easier, and faster alternative to produce texts, images and videos. Social scientists are already starting to show how GenAI reinforces stereotypes and discrimination, partly due to gender, race and origin biases in the data used for machine learning. However, less has been said about ageism in GenAI. This is probably because ageist depictions are the norm, and ageism is widely disregarded and deprioritised in research, industry, and society. Building on ageist depictions, the media industry might be reinforcing stereotypes and harming self-perception. In this exploratory research, we analyse whether GenAI produces significant ageist outputs (or not) and to what extent GenAI reinforces age stereotypes through the analysis of 808 images generated with Midjourney. We compared older people's depictions with those of the general population. We employed computer vision and visual analysis to assess if Gen AI falls into associating ageist prejudices with older people. Preliminary results show that generative depictions not only fall into age stereotyping but also exploit mainly harmful tropes, disregarding all the diverse experiences of ageing. Thus, while the media industry has been moving towards an inclusive discourse, the ease of GenAI has burst as a threat to the inclusion of diverse perspectives.

For the past year, using large language models (LLMs) for content moderation appears to have solved some of the perennial issues of online speech governance. Developers have promised 'revolutionary' improvements (Weng, Goel and Vallone, 2023), with large language models considered capable of bypassing some of the semantic and ideological ambiguities of human language that hinder moderation at scale (Wang et al., 2023). For this purpose, LLMs are trained to generate “moderate speech” – that is, not to utter offensive language; to provide neutral, balanced and reliable prompt outputs; and to demonstrate an appreciation for complexity and relativity when asked about controversial topics. But the search for optimal content moderation obscures broader questions about what kind of speech is being generated. How does generative AI speak “moderately”? That is: under what norms, training data and larger institutions does it produce “moderate speech”? By examining the regulatory frameworks AI labs, comparing responses to moderation prompts across three LLMs and scrutinising their training datasets, this paper seeks to shed light on the norms, techniques and regulatory cultures around the generation of “moderate speech” in LLM chat completion models.

Sociability is ostensibly the raison d'être of social media. While studies have explored the promotion of relationships online, little attention has been given to the interactional and discursive resources that users employ to that end vis-à-vis platform design features. This paper offers an analytical framework for studies of digital interaction that bridges micro and macro approaches to social media. Conceptualizing online positive social actions (OPSA) as social affordances of social media platforms, the framework includes four evaluative components: (1) positive social actions (e.g., gratitude), (2) platform technological features (e.g., tagging), (3) interpretation (by recipients and overhearing audiences), and (4) social outcome (which might be pro- or antisocial). OPSA allows an analysis of the different social outcomes generated in the intersection between platform design and the communicative actions of users. The paper demonstrates the framework on three examples of successful, mock, and failed OPSA, and discusses avenues for future research utilizing the OPSA framework.

Scholarly attention is increasingly paid to the dynamic and embedded ways in which third-party tracking has become widespread in the mobile ecosystem. Much of this research has focused almost exclusively on Android applications in Google Play and their respective infrastructures of data capture, even though Apple and their App Store have a significant market share. To examine Apple’s ecosystem and to overcome the challenge of opening and inspecting large quantities of apps, we have explored the role that a large language model (LLM) can play in enabling this process? We have opted to use Chat GPT-4 because of how it has been designed to assist humans in both interacting and understanding code. We therefore ask: Can Chat-GPT assist scholars interested in Apple’s mobile ecosystem through the auditing of Apple app (IPA) files?

The outcomes of the explorative study include 1) an evaluation of Chat-GPT4 as an assistant for reading code at scale as well as its potential for automating processes involved in future app monitoring and regulation; 2) a deep dive into the shortcomings of Chat-GPT4 when it comes to interventions into the mobile ecosystems; and 3) a discussion of ethical issues involved in harnessing LLM for forwarding a research agenda around Apple’s otherwise understudied ecosystem. Our exploration aims to evaluate a methodological intervention that could bring more observability into an otherwise closed ecosystem that promises the preservation of end-user privacy, without any meaningful external oversight.

Algorithmic content moderation is becoming a common practice employed by many social media platforms to regulate ‘toxic’ language and to promote democratic public conversations. This paper provides a normative critique of politically liberal assumption of civility embedded in algorithmic moderation, illustrated by Google’s Perspective API. From a radical democratic standpoint, this paper normatively and empirically distinguishes between incivility and intolerance because they have different implications for democratic discourse. The paper recognises the potential political, expressive, and symbolic values of incivility, especially for the socially marginalised. We, therefore, argue against regulation of incivility using AI. There are, however, good reasons to regulate hate speech but it is incumbent upon the users of AI moderation to show that this can be done reliably. The paper emphasises the importance of detecting diverse forms of hate speech that convey intolerant and exclusionary ideas without using explicitly hateful or extremely emotional wording. The paper then empirically evaluates the performance of the current algorithmic moderation to see whether it can discern incivility and intolerance and whether it can detect diverse forms of intolerance. Empirical findings reveal that the current algorithmic moderation does not promote democratic discourse, but rather deters it by silencing the uncivil but pro-democratic voices of the marginalised as well as by failing to detect intolerant messages whose meanings are embedded in nuances and rhetoric. New algorithmic moderation should focus on the reliable and transparent identification of hate speech and be in line with the feminist, anti-racist, and critical theories of democratic discourse.

Our research delves into the impact of disinformation in emergencies (DiE), specifically within the context of nuclear emergency responses, and the dynamics of the political economy behind it. Key questions guiding our investigation include suitable assessment techniques for DiE detection and evaluation and effective governance responses.

Our research employs established communications theories of propaganda, emphasizing propaganda analysis as a tool for understanding DiE and developing institutional responses. We examine two nuclear emergency cases—the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FNPP) disaster and the occupation of the Zaporozhzhian Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine—to uncover the disruptive impact of disinformation on emergency communication.

Through the categorization of propaganda into black, gray, and white types, we analyze tactics employed in DiE, shedding light on strategic intent, transparency, and veracity. Case studies reveal instances of false narratives propagated by governments and media channels, influencing public perception and exacerbating tensions. While our study has not observed significant AI-enabled DiE, we highlight its use in DiE identification. However, state-led counter-disinformation initiatives face challenges, including jurisdictional issues and calls to protect free expression.

We posit the necessity of non-state-led networked governance structures, drawing parallels with successful cybersecurity governance models. These frameworks, informed by interdisciplinary insights and operating independently from states, are primed to address the multifaceted challenges posed by DiE. Addressing participatory, structural, and operational impediments within existing content moderation governance mechanisms emerges as a pivotal imperative for the realization of effective strategies.

This study explores how the governance and conceptualization of misinformation by five major social media platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter, TikTok) has changed from their inception until the end of 2023. Applying a longitudinal mixed-method approach, the paper traces the inclusion of different types of misinformation into the platforms' policies and examines periods of convergence and divergence in their handling of misinformation.

The study identifies an early topical focus on spam and impersonation, with a notable shift towards political misinformation in the 2010s. Additionally, it highlights significant inter-platform differences in addressing misinformation, which illustrates the fluid nature of definitions of misinformation, as well as the influence of external incidents (elections, conflicts, COVID-19) and regulatory, societal, and technological developments on policy changes.

This study investigates the impact of Large Language Model (LLM)-based chatbots, specifically in the context of political information retrieval, using the 2024 Taiwan presidential election as a case study. With the rapid integration of LLMs into search engines like Google and Microsoft Bing, concerns about information quality, algorithmic gatekeeping, biases, and content moderation emerged. This research aims to (1) assess the alignment of AI chatbot responses with factual political information, (2) examine the adherence of chatbots to algorithmic norms and impartiality ideals, (3) investigate the factuality and transparency of chatbot-sourced synopses, and (4) explore the universality of chatbot gatekeeping across different languages within the same geopolitical context.

Adopting a case study methodology and prompting method, the study analyzes responses from Microsoft’s LLM-powered search engine chatbot, Copilot, in five languages (English, Traditional Chinese, Simple Chinese, German, Swedish). The findings reveal significant discrepancies in content accuracy, source citation, and response behavior across languages. Notably, Copilot demonstrated a higher rate of factual errors in Traditional Chinese while exhibiting better performance in Simplified Chinese. The study also highlights problematic referencing behaviors and a tendency to prioritize certain types of sources, such as Wikipedia, over legitimate news outlets.

These results underscore the need for enhanced transparency, thoughtful design, and vigilant content moderation in AI technologies, especially during politically sensitive events. Addressing these issues is crucial for ensuring high-quality information delivery and maintaining algorithmic accountability in the evolving landscape of AI-driven communication platforms.

As social media increasingly plays host to health content, there is a growing body of scholarship considering how the parasocial trust relationships developed between audiences and social media influencers, might influence their audience’s health. This paper aims to extend the literature in this field by interrogating the workings and impact of social media health influencer (SMHI) cultures using the lens of Actor-Network Theory to explore the connections between influencers, platforms, and audiences.

Drawing on data from the first two phases of a four-phase mixed methods study which utilised the Walkthrough Method and Netnography.

Initial findings point to concerns over the portrayal of qualifications among health influencers. Whilst previous literature suggests that healthcare workers should be present in social media spaces to provide clarity and dispel health misinformation, the early findings suggest that although qualification is used as a method of garnering audience trust, qualifications do not necessarily ensure the health influencer is sharing evidence-based health information. The data identified SMHIs frequently presenting online courses as professional health qualifications, using qualifications to elicit trust in health information without an evidence-base, or sharing health information which is outside of the scope of their qualification and training. with some leveraging online courses as professional credentials, potentially leading to misinformation. These findings call into question the effectiveness of strategies that prioritize healthcare professionals as a solution to misinformation.

This paper presents findings from an ongoing project focused on sober curious communities on TikTok. In this paper I argue that these communities offer a haven from in ‘intoxigenic’ digital spaces for individuals navigating the complexities of sobriety.

This research examines the implications of TikTok's emergence as a locus of sociality for the sober curious movement, both in terms of individual well-being and broader societal attitudes towards addiction and recovery. Central to this is an exploration of the creative and expressive practices employed by individuals within sober curious communities and the attitudes and experiences of those who follow them.

The paper draws on qualitative data from interviews with 28 sober curious TikTok users and a systematic content analysis of 800 TikTok videos.

Emergent findings reveal insights into the role of TikTok in destigmatizing addiction, fostering empathy and promoting positive representations of abstinence and resilience.

Three key themes with be explored: the value of digital storytelling, the nature of TikTok accountability, and the visibility of failures or relapses. These themes underscore TikTok's significance as a platform for personal expression, accountability, and community-building within the sober curious movement.

Combined, these themes speak to TikTok as an important platform for the sober curious. TikTok allows the messy, unpredictable, embodied and digital practices and experiences of sobriety to play out. Reframing sobriety beyond medicalised narratives of addiction to provide a more nuanced and freeing set of practices and contexts that enable respondents to rethink and re-evaluate their relationship with alcohol.

According to social media users’ comments, the recent increase in social media content detailing the symptoms and experiences of living with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has led to many users self-diagnosing with the disorder. This conference paper presents the findings of an 18-month-long digital ethnographic study in which I analyzed ADHD TikTok videos and the technological infrastructures and assemblages surrounding the TikTok app, to interrogate how TikTok has become a voice of authority in the self-diagnosis of ADHD. This paper demonstrates how ADHD TikTok content creators create videos that cultivate sentiments of trust, intimacy, and relatability. These creators also adopt visual and discursive norms from other trending TikTok content, and from more traditional visual media content. In doing so, ADHD content creators generate authority by conforming and contributing to a set of coproduced content standards that ensure their videos are deemed viewable and relevant by viewers and the algorithm. Contrary to traditional understandings of authority, I find that medical authority on TikTok is not produced by individuals or institutions, but rather by content creators’ collective and collaborative performativity of everyday lived experiences, and their engagement with the supporting technologies of the TikTok app. To account for this shift in how authority is produced in our digital mediascape, I build on theories of social, cultural, and algorithmic authority, to offer a theoretical framework of ‘techno-cultural authority’. I ultimately argue that the techno-cultural authority of ADHD TikTok challenges customary understandings of authority figures and disrupts traditional medical expertise within the American healthcare industry.

Research exploring identity performance on Tiktok has highlighted a departure from older self-making frameworks - such as the networked self- and a move towards a more ‘algorithmized’ version of self-making online. This departure takes us from a framework that emphasises performance in the Goffmanian sense to a model that emphasises the role of the algorithm in shaping our identity practices. Social media platforms, though, have been established as important spaces for the performance health and illness identities. With this in mind, this paper asks whether and how illness performances occur on Tiktok and further explores the extent to which we are departing from more traditional self-making practices.

To do this, we draw on findings from an ongoing Leverhulme Trust-funded project focused on social media uses relevant to hereditary cancer syndromes. These syndromes mark health conditions linked to known genetic mutations, also called “cancer genes”, that heighten the risk of having cancer from an early age. Carriers of these genetic mutations are often referred to as ‘previvors’: healthy individuals who are coping with the awareness of having a genetic predisposition to cancer. We used computational techniques to access posts about two hereditary cancer syndromes: BRCA 1/2 and Lynch Syndrome published on TikTok followed by a qualitative content analysis. From this, our initial findings show how strong elements of older identity frameworks remain present in content produced by previvors on TikTok with previvors identity performances remaining very much networked, interactive and connected to specific communities.

In 2023, the influencer industry was hit with a viral trend known as “de-influencing.” The trend has expanded to include honest reviews of products that miss the mark, content that empowers underrepresented consumers and holds brands accountable, and changes to the influencer industry that promise deeper accountability and greater authenticity. As consumers become more critical of influencers and their struggle to present an authentic persona to their audiences, de-influencing has emerged as a potential return to the origins of the industry. I argue de-influencing is not only impacting influencers, but other actors within the industry, like intermediary companies looking to build successful businesses through the public avoidance of influencer culture while still providing similar services. This study explores the role of a particular intermediary called The Hummingbirds Co., an emerging company that applies the logic of de-influencing to their business to avoid common critiques of the influencer industry and further cement their claims of creating more authentic partnerships and thus, greater success for commercial brands and creators alike. Intermediary companies like The Hummingbirds Co. are attempting to benefit off the de-influencing trend by promoting themselves as anti-influencer and anti-influencer culture. The preliminary findings within this extended abstract begin to explicate how this shift toward de-influencing has impacted actors beyond influencers themselves and how this particular intermediary is benefitting off the trend.

Whenever a celebrity posts a photo on Instagram, it is almost inevitable that the first comment on it will be made by a porn bot (Alvarez 2020). Observations of this kind – some focusing on the distorted perception of ‘sexiness’ and social media authenticity (Thing 2020; Salim 2023), others contesting Instagram’s community guidelines prohibiting both nudity and automation (Santos 2023) – have been ubiquitous in online tech reports for years. In academic discussions, scholars usually define porn bots as automated or semi-automated software agents that operate via sexual solicitation to capture attention (Narrang 2019). Twitter porn bots using Not Safe for Work (NSFW) hashtags to advertise commercial links have been addressed in their generic patterns (Paasonen, Jarrett, and Light 2019). Tumblr porn bots have generated significant controversy due to their uninterrupted operation during the platform’s so-called ‘porn ban’ (Pilipets and Paasonen 2020). Within Instagram, as we will show, porn bots continuously intervene in a network of relationships that users forge with the platform, avoiding detection through a range of circumvention tactics. In all these instances, porn bots operate as medium-specific, heterosexually scripted ‘personas’ (Bucher 2014), demonstrating remarkable adaptability to the platforms’ current cultures of use.

This article builds on a growing body of research on content creators and authenticity through examining practices of performing authenticity of a rising labor figures, e-commerce streamers in China. Along with content creation, they interrogate agricultural products, infrastructure networks and their own body to create an authentic rural China. Their invisible labor on logistical level to ensure the data flow contributes to a richer typology on platform labor and global perspective on platformization studies.

Based on one-year field work, I investigate how these e-commerce streamers handle logistical challenges from three aspects. Firstly, they select and define the authentic rural products considering the visibility requirements on platform. Secondly, they put extract work to maintain power networks to ensure streaming, like prepare portable electrical generators. Thirdly, they discipline their own body and develop labor degradation to simply the intense streaming activities. Borrow concepts from logistical media studies, this research theorize their labor as logistical struggle.

In conclusion, the practice of these e-commerce streamers in marginalized rural China informs the diverse process to perform authenticity in platform economy era and the multiple layers of platform labor across global scales. It also shows how authenticity based on structural inequality, urban-rural divide policy, is commodified and enhances the social status of marginalized social group by enforcing them more invisible labor.

Examining and explaining tensions between being public and private on the internet is an enduring aspect of the work of the Association of Internet Researchers. In this paper, I present a concept to aid those working in this space: digital identity integrity, the ability to use a range of personal accounts and platforms to meaningfully participate in digital cultures and economies. When an individual can maintain a reasonable amount of privacy over their identity, knows how to effectively use platforms and services, and is in a position to contribute to broader digital and data justice projects, they can be said to have digital identity integrity.

This paper is drawn from a larger research project into digital identity integrity, and presents the results of its first two stages: establishing the discourse of the identity verification industry, and conducting pilot workshops on evaluating digital identity integrity. The project builds a case for including resistive practices to identity unification – like being anonymous or creating multiple accounts on one platform – to get a fuller picture of digital identity and inclusion.

The goal of this research project is to work with the idea of digital identity integrity as a way to evaluate the push and pull between public and private when it comes to identities on the internet.

This paper analyzes three recent lawsuits against Open AI (the makers of Chat GPT) and two licensing agreements between Open AI and news organizations to argue that generative AI represents a further exacerbation of the precarious relationship between news publishers and information intermediaries. The growth of search engines and digital platforms as the primary means of news consumption has increased contestations around lost traffic and revenue for news publishers. Through the analysis of the lawsuits and licensing agreements, this essays shows three changes in the relationship with significant consequences for the future of the news industry. First it shows that the increasing use of generative AI chatbots (e.g. Chat GPT) will further reduce traffic to publishers' websites.

Secondly, it shows a further opacity in the relationship between publishers and information intermediaries given the lack of disclosure about what is used to train their AI models. Lastly, the analysis shows that the content of news sites will no longer be used "as is" but mixed and merged with other content to erase journalistic labor and contribution. These findings point to worrisome disruptions ahead in the digital news ecosystem where devoid of the precious currency of traffic, news outlets could be pushed further into a precarious position of decreased revenue and content and increasing layoffs. The consequent dismantling of established institutions of the news media also means the loss of rigorous reporting, fact checking, archival knowledge and adversarial journalism that is the lifeblood of democracies.

Economic precarity and the competitive environment of the news industry have resulted in pressures for news professionals to become early adopters and foster AI in journalism. At the same time, practitioners have voiced concerns over overblown expectations of AI and ethical challenges specific to journalistic contexts. Against this backdrop, this study asks: What role do expectations play in realizing journalistic AI projects in small newsrooms and with what implications? Empirically, we draw on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork following the Associated Press’ efforts to develop AI tools for five local newsrooms in collaboration with data scientists from U.S. universities. Previous research has conceptualized AI hype as the gap between possibilities and realities, or as a form of stimulation, amplification, and magnification. This study examines hype through a theoretical lens of a sociology of expectations. It understands hype as a cultural resource that coordinates actors and mobilizes resources that can be strategically leveraged. Instead of painting news professionals caught in between AI hype with little power, or as uncritical actors, this study sheds light on the complex role of their involvement and investment in shaping expectations around AI.

This paper examines the ethico-political negotiations surrounding "world models" in the news media industry. Utilizing ethnography, it explores how data workers in a news organization integrate AI-driven solutions into the editorial process, navigating the construction of world models. Drawing from six months of fieldwork, the study focuses on a concrete AI project involving collaboration between an in-house data science team, universities, and industrial PhD students. Observation primarily occurred in the development department, with journalists implicitly present as end-users. Methodologically, the paper incorporates insights from the anthropologies of technology and algorithmic systems, framing digitization as multifaceted. It also considers the anticipatory practices of participants and theoretical frameworks from political geography, history of science, and media studies. Theoretical underpinnings are complemented by insights from science and technology studies, particularly regarding "science frictions" that emerge when disparate domains intersect. The findings contribute to critical data studies and AI research, providing ethnographic insights into machine learning projects' mundane work practices and understanding how machine learning projects aim to model the world while also negotiating tensions between reflecting existing realities and shaping future trajectories.

Platformization of news, and the resultant concerns for publishers, have led to the rise and formalization of a network of intermediaries that mediate between news businesses and large distribution platforms in India. These intermediaries facilitate and broker interactions between news publishers and platforms by providing AI/ML tools and algorithmic expertise on news production, distribution, and monetization. This paper locates and conceptualizes them as platformization intermediaries, highlighting their role in reshaping cultural economies and practices into platform-optimized models. Platformization intermediaries leverage certified partnerships with major platforms thereby assisting in integrating platform infrastructure, funding and governance models into the digital news industry.

Taking a political economy approach, this study critically examines the services and market dynamics of a range of platformization intermediaries in the news industry in India. Further, interviews with these actors in India unpack the implications on news publishers and the public interest value of news. This paper draws focus onto these emerging and influential actors aiding the platformization of news. It highlights their role in translating platforms' algorithmic and economic priorities into the human and social practices of news-making, and in reinforcing platform dependencies within the digital news industry.

A recent development in the field of fact-checking is what some scholars call the “debunking turn” in which fact-checking organisations move from fact-checking expressions of politicians and public figures to checking claims made on social media. A main driver of this change is the proliferation of a paid program initiated by Meta, where fact-checkers check and label claims on the platform in exchange for monetary remuneration. This paper draws on interviews with and fieldwork amongst fact-checkers who are or have been part of the Meta partnership. Based on the empirical insights we argue that the human-machine assemblage in fact-checking is (1) enabling a move beyond the ‘debunking turn’ by turning journalists into ‘machine learners’ and (2) cements a ‘politics of demarcation’ in which public contestation over public facts is diminished and moved into networked infrastructures.

With this argument, the paper highlights an additional aspect of the platformisation of journalism, as the labelling and claim-checking work of journalists now also enables large tech platforms to expand technical infrastructures that commodify journalistic work by turning it into training data aimed at improving their ML systems and algorithms. This enables platforms to move further beyond their current market role, as they also participate in the further industrialisation and standardisation of fact-checking. As large tech companies become industry leaders in the provision of ML systems, for example, for fact-checking, the need to understand what politics they produce equally increases, as they become integral in the production of democratic ideals of citizens and public debate.

Sex is central to the internet. It exists everywhere online and yet is everywhere constrained, sanitized, normalized, and invisibilized. This panel will investigate the ways in which sex seeps, spills, and oozes across boundaries, both online and off, despite efforts to control and limit its impact beyond consumer capitalism. Author 1 examines online ‘gooning’ communities, oriented around prolonged masturbation sessions to multiple streams of pornography. Gooners build community around the fetishization and roleplaying of porn addiction, but simultaneously produce a problematic queerness that reifies some elements of heteronormativity. Author 2 examines the ways that Generative AI imagines queerness, probing AI systems by asking them to imagine the figure of the ‘twink’. The end result is “glitchcraft,” which refers to creative practices of engagement that underscore the excitatory enchantments of generative AI, their frustrating constraints, and the accidents–exploited or serendipitous–that might result. Authors 3, 4, and 5 examine alternative social media aimed specifically at enabling users to engage in sexual expression. They document both the affordances of these platforms for creating sex-positive and kink-friendly online spaces, and their constraints, as they introduce new norms, and thus new forms of exclusion and marginalization. Author 6 examines anal sex practices as mediated by gay hook-up apps like Grindr and shows how these apps increasingly mediate larger portions of gay men’s everyday lives. Grindr inflects the way they imagine, propose, seek out, and react to a diverse spectrum of anal activities (such as fisting, spanking, caressing, and rimming).

While digital platforms have reconfigured the institutions and practices of cultural production around the globe, current research is dominated by studies that take as their reference point the Anglo-American world--and, to a lesser extent--China (Cunningham & Craig 2019; Kaye et al. 2021; Poell et al. 2021; Zhao 2019). Aside from totalizing theories of platform imperialism (Jin, 2013), the “rest of the world” has thus received relatively scant attention. Consequently, central concepts in the study of platform-based cultural production bear a strong imprint of Western institutions, infrastructures, industries, discourses, and cultural practices. US-based research, in particular, has informed how we understand and subsequently theorize notions of precarity, labor, governance, authenticity, gender, creativity, diversity, and autonomy in a platform environment. We can’t simply apply these concepts to local cultures of production in other parts of the world. There is bound to be friction, as this panel will demonstrate, between how labor, precarity, and governance are understood in the Anglo-American world and the lived experiences of platform-dependent cultural labor in Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe, and East Asia.

Concerns about Western-dominated research and theory are, of course, by no means novel. Post-colonial and decolonial theorists have long criticized the dominance and universalism of Western theory, pointing to the continuation of colonial knowledge-power relations (Chakrabarty 2009; Chen 2010; Escobar 2018; Mignolo 2012). Moreover, there have been numerous calls to decolonize (Glück 2018; Willems & Mano 2016) and de-westernize (Curran & Park 2000; Khiabany 2003) media studies and, more recently, production and platform studies (Bouquillion 2023; Bulut 2022; Zhang & Chen 2022). That being said, in practice, the US and Western Europe continue to function as the primary and often sole frame of reference in research on platforms and cultural production. In the light of these concerns, this panel aims to contribute to efforts to: 1) challenge universalism, 2) “provincialize” the US, and 3) multiply our frames of reference in the study of platforms and cultural production. Such a conceptual undertaking is especially vital as the cultural industries are at the heart of societal processes of meaning making (Hesmondhalgh 2018) and market activity.

Let us unpack how the papers in this panel pursue this objective. The first paper develops a conceptual framework to expand our frames of reference for studying platforms and cultural production. Departing from epistemological universalism, it argues that “platforms”, “cultural production”, and the “local” need to be studied as dynamic configurations, characterized by crucial variations and correspondences across the globe. That is, in contemporary instances of creating cultural content, transnational platform markets, infrastructures, governance frameworks, and cultural practices become entangled with local political economies and cultural practices.

Examining how such configurations take shape around the world, the next four papers in this panel focus on specific regions and modes of production, interrogating how local and transnational political economic relations and practices articulate each other. In this discussion, we pay specific attention to the notions of precarity, governance, and imaginaries.

The second paper reframes influencer precarity in a semi-peripheral context in the Balkans and emphasizes the relational basis of influencer agency, as influencers rely on family members and oft-mocked “Instagram husbands” to alleviate precarity. It thus offers insights into the local characteristics of algorithmic encounters with platforms by proposing the concept of platform lethargy. This concept speaks to an emotional response and deliberate refusal on the part of influencers to adapt to platform mandates. This refusal is rooted in algorithmic knowledge from the semi-periphery, where creators are cognizant of their position in a devalued platform market.

The third paper critically examines the intricate dynamics of creator culture, challenging the assumption of globally detached markets. Focusing on Latin American content creators in the United States, it explores how their aspirations intersect with the construction of the "Latin American" content creator dream. The study also scrutinizes the role of Content Service Organizations (CSOs) executives in shaping creator culture. Despite global portrayals, tensions emerge, revealing national market characteristics rooted in socio-cultural, linguistic, and regional norms.

The fourth paper examines how drama creatives, who work for streaming platforms, are globally connected and yet remain nationally restrained in terms of how they imagine work. Through the notion of platform ambiguity, the paper shows how streaming platforms negotiate with cultural producers by both enabling and restraining their work. Thus, it thus de-westernizes scholarship on platforms and cultural production by highlighting how drama makers are not only creative but also geopolitical subjects dependent on the state.

The last paper offers an alternative epistemological and ontological perspective on the state-platform-user configuration, where each actor works in alignment with others under the logic of governance. It uses a Chinese social media platform, Douyin, as a case to reveal how platforms rely on anthropomorphization to communicate with cultural producers and develop playful governance of China’s political and cultural environment.

On the 25th anniversary of AoIR, this roundtable will reflect on whether the internet that we have is the internet that we want. Pre-empting that the answer to this question may be no, because digital technologies are not always good for societies, the roundtable responds to Ruha Benjamin’s invocation that we must ‘Remember to imagine and craft the worlds you cannot live without, just as you dismantle the ones you cannot live within’. In other words, not losing sight of what we know about how digital technologies can end up doing harm, we will use our imaginations to challenge how things are and identify how we want them to be. Or, as

Toni Morrison puts it, we will ‘Dream a little before [we] think’ (cited by Benjamin, 2024). To this end, in the roundtable, we speculate on whether the notion of a good internet helps us do this dreaming, imagining and crafting.

We will confront the complexity of that simple, four-letter word, good, considering who gets to decide whether, how and for whom the internet is good, and how perspectives on a good internet differ globally. We will address this normative challenge head on, perhaps disagree with each other, and we might not arrive at a single, settled definition of a good internet. We will consider whether general principles for a good internet can be abstracted from context-specific requirements relating to particular tech deployments in different geographical locations. To imagine and craft the internet we cannot live without, we will reflect on what kind of internet we want to live with and in.

In addition to the five named roundtable participants, other AoIR and Digital Good Network visionaries will join the conversation, including Nancy Baym, Gina Neff and Ros Williams, and PhD students Arathy SB and Shaoying Zhang.

TikTok has rapidly established itself as a fixture for debate on the state of the web and society at large. The platform serves as a primary generator of trends and viral content, and as a locus for political concerns around globalisation, surveillance and privacy. What is considerably understudied is how TikTok is forging connections in political discourses more locally. We present an exploration of political discourses on TikTok through the case study of local city council elections, and later state elections, for Brisbane in the state of Queensland, Australia. Video metadata was recorded using the Zeeschuimer (Peeters, 2023) tool. We focus on the discursive dynamics of the broader local community both separately and in response to the communication of candidates. We draw on research on the social news landscape and the role of ‘newsfluencers’ and community narratives amidst changing audience expectations (Hurcombe, 2022), and clustering of cross-ideological ties in social media news sharing over time (Angus et al, 2023). Through this, we contrast the topic-selective engagement across various actors, from mainstream and national news outlets, local or alternative media, businesses, organisations, political campaigners, and unaffiliated individual users. As such, we focus on how local TikTok users respond to, remix, engage with, and disseminate political communication on TikTok, as well as how they create their own political content, such as advocating for/against a candidate, an issue, or engaging in commentary on the wider election process.

This paper examines how the figures and imaginaries of hegemonic masculinity are co-produced and contested among a reactionary influencer fandom. It assumes an intersectional masculinities approach to the question of how Andrew Tate and his social media audience(s) articulate and mobilise anti-feminist and anti-LGBTQIA+ discourses online. Affective intermediation is proposed as a concept that situates relational labour within the influencer ecosystem in terms of the affective production of masculinity as a cultural and economic category. Data consist of a 15-month sample of Andrew Tate’s posts on the video-sharing platform Rumble (n=213) and a purposive sample (n=17) of Tate's posts on X (formerly Twitter). The dataset includes all user responses to posts on Rumble (n=112,656) and X (n=14,796). The methods used are constructionist thematic analysis, which orients towards the sociocultural contexts of discourse and computational discourse analysis, including topic modelling. Incorporating perspectives on fandom, labour, and the manosphere, preliminary findings suggest three key points of tension. First, the tension created by audience directives about who Tate should interact with and how he should conduct himself in order to avoid collaborations with creators who appear “gay’. Second, the tension between “simping” and support that fans and followers must navigate when expressing approval of Tate whilst trying to avoid being seen as “gay”. Third, the tension between demands of cultural and economic production, including how audiences articulate their expectations with regard to the production of masculinist content.

Are politicians starting to behave like influencers? While pursuing visibility is hardly new for elected officials, the platformization of our media landscape has intensified and multiplied pressures to establish an active presence on social media. Building on research in the cultural industries, “influencer creep” (Bishop, 2023) describes an invasion of commercialized social media logic into other professions. We currently lack similar insights into the political field, despite considerable scholarly attention to how social media transforms political communication.

I explore the platformization of communications activities undertaken by French parliamentary teams in the Assemblée Nationale. Combining over 40 semi-structured interviews with MPs and their assistants, participant observation within parliamentary environments, and a quantitative analysis of MPs' social media presences, I study how MPs and their teams structure their online visibility labour.

I identify a convergence of "influencer creep" dynamics within parliamentary communication practices, characterized by its three main dynamics as theorized by Bishop (2023): the construction of personal brands, optimization strategies tailored to platform infrastructures, and the performance of authenticity to engage audiences. These pressures present a heavy burden for French parliamentary teams. High workloads and limited staff leave little time to devote to online visibility labour, and even less to master digital tools, platform cultures, and algorithmic strategies.

These findings highlight the encroachment of commercial logics in political spheres, blurring distinctions between public service and self-commodification. Highly disparate professions are internalizing platform logic into their work routines, motivating continued study into how "influencer creep" transforms labour.

Female conservative political influencers are an obscure but growing force within American politics, steadily sewing distrust in public institutions. By exploiting the inadequacies and inequalities in a capitalistic society, these women profit off the fears they cultivate through conspiratorial narratives such as the government poisoning food and indoctrinating children to encourage their Instagram audiences to boycott “woke” corporations by purchasing their household supplies through Patriot Wellness Boxes and other conservative MLMs. Guided by Abidin’s (2021) framework of refracted publics and Cotter’s (2019) concept of “playing the visibility game,” this study seeks to understand the ways that vaguely coded conservative MLMs such as Patriot Wellness Box enable conservative female influencers to circumvent algorithms and sentiment seed more radical conspiracies within lifestyle content. The major findings reveal that these women utilize self-amplification groups to simultaneously to grow their audiences and obscure their connections to the far-right and one another. Second, the MLMs are discussed in ways that mirror sovereign citizen/white militia rhetoric that positions the government as an existential threat they must be prepared to fight. While they are not organizing militias, they are promoting anti-democratic messages, xenophobia, and authoritarian-esque sentiments under the guise of a conservative lifestyle achievable through MLM participation. As the 2024 presidential election looms large, we must analyze the ways that trust in government and public institutions is being undermined through neoliberal conservative MLMs one subscription box ad at a time

I argue that Instagram’s political economy, particularly the state-corporate nexus of surveillance and censorship in India, processes of algorithmic privileging and disciplining, and acontextual hate speech moderation practices, renders marginal queer/trans users particularly vulnerable to censorship and surveillance. I draw on insights from 23 in-depth interviews with queer/trans women and non-binary Instagram users and community organisers across India, conducted February-April 2023 during my doctoral fieldwork, to explore the contours of these formations.

Digital space offers up new avenues and modalities for queer users to assert, contest, reformulate and negotiate ideas of queerness, as well as build relationships and intimacies (Dasgupta & DasGupta, 2018; Mitra & Gajjala, 2008). At the same time, the political economy of social media structures, limits, and reconfigures its use for queer/trans users in India, particularly women. Contemporary platforms like Facebook, Instagram and X (previously Twitter) function on an attention economy where virality equals profit (for the platforms and advertisers on them), where users are subject to algorithmic structures that privilege certain content over others (Paasonen, 2020), and where state-corporate nexuses of surveillance and control regulate its use (Dasgupta & DasGupta, 2018). Queer/trans users marginalised along the axes of caste, religion, dis/ability, language and location are particularly vulnerable to platform moderation practices, or deliberately targeted by state surveillance and censorship laws.

Drawing on participant experiences, I examine how the potentialities of Instagram as a site to mediate articulations of a radical politics of queer liberation are restricted, thwarted and reconfigured by platform design and policing.

In this study, we research the engagement on Ugandan LGBT+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi- and Transsexual) organizations and activist’s posts from a multi-platform perspective. Focusing on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, our aim is to inform multi-platform research by studying how a historically underrepresented group in the global south navigates a complex communication ecology in an uncertain socio-political situation. We ask: 1) Which posts emerge as more popular regarding user engagement on the different platforms respectively 2) What characterizes highly engaged posts across the three platforms 3) What is the logic behind engagement practices? We approach our research questions using three different yet interrelated methodological approaches: A) Quantitative identification of highly engaged posts, B) Qualitative analysis of these posts and C) Qualitative interviews with organizational representatives. Our results show that different platforms have different logics when attracting engagement among activists. This has to do with platform affordances (such as Instagram pushing for photos and scrolling) and political realities such as Facebook being blocked, but also on the audience, that Twitter is perceived to be populated by international allies. There is not a lot of call for action because engaging with posts implies that you are seen, not only that you have seen the post, but that the posting organization sees you and sometimes even the government. We, therefore, conclude that engagement in this particular context is governed by visibility.

The release of the video game Breath of The Wild in 2017 ushered in one of the most popular ships that the Legend of Zelda series has seen, that of Sidon and Link. In Breath of the Wild Link travels to the kingdom of the Zora, a race of humanoid fish creatures, and meets their prince, Sidon. Sidon’s charm and enthusiasm for Link resulted in many fans claiming that Sidon was Link’s boyfriend. In the sequel, Tears of the Kingdom, fans were faced with a new character, Yona, who was introduced as Sidon’s fiancée, thus contradicting their previous queer readings. However, there were also many subtextually queer moments that provided support for the queer readings of Sidon and Link. What is at stake here is understanding where these queer readings fit in relation to the heteronormative reading that the inclusion of Yona supports. To come closer to this understanding I analyzed examples of queer streamers on Twitch playing through the quest line with Sidon and the queer readings that the streamer and viewers in chat created. I argue that the co-creation of these queer readings is a form of play, allowing fans to change the game so it is satisfying and fulfilling, and thus cannot be separated from the game. Through play, these communities were able to create narratives maintaining Sidon and Link’s romantic relationship that drew on in-game elements to have a satisfying experience with the quest line thus making it a part of the game.

This paper explores how young queer women and sapphic people engage with queer elders and generational imaginaries through consuming historical content on social media. In recent years, digital spaces have facilitated an explosion of queer nostalgic content, digitised archival material, and historical education, rapidly shifting how queer pasts and cultures are transmitted. Scholars have begun to examine how this nostalgic boom has contributed to recalibrations of lesbian identity labels and community formations (Green and Crawley 2024) but there has been little empirical investigation into what this means for the young people enmeshed in these digital cultures. Drawing from an ongoing project conducted across the state of Victoria, Australia involving 21 young queer women and sapphic people aged 16-24, I examine the relationship between this content and young people’s affective investments in the concept of queer elders. I consider how access to elders is digitally mediated and argue that such engagements are both connective and disconnective in nature. Finding elders through historical content has the potential to generate cross-temporal solidarity and invigorate a deeply affective sense of belonging to a queer lineage. Yet, the fact this connection is limited to digital spaces and fragmented modes of recognition also magnifies feelings of loss and distance. I build upon queer theorisations of nostalgia and kinship (Bradway & Freeman 2022; Juhasz 2006; Kagan 2022) to conceptualise these relations as a form of “nostalgic kinship”—a relational, intergenerational structure of feelings that simultaneously binds and distances.

This paper examines the ways in which companies collaborate with green influencers on TikTok in order to combine sustainable communication with product sponsorship. TikTok, with its highly visual and meme-based communication style, offers companies a channel to align their marketing strategies with green messaging. Green influencers play a central role in this dynamic, blending activism and promotional content to raise awareness about sustainability while endorsing products. However, the actual willingness of these narratives to challenge the capitalist neoliberal logic has been questioned in the literature.

A content and thematic analysis of 45 TikTok videos was conducted to see how companies express their environmental commitment through the affordances offered by the platform, including visual and viral aspects. Indeed, the aim of the paper is to explore the main actors, central themes and recurring narratives in these collaborations.

The findings reveal that companies from diverse sectors integrate product sponsorship into educational narratives that inform users about environmental issues while positioning the sponsored product as a solution. This approach aligns with the storytelling styles of green influencers, potentially enhancing the credibility of their content. However, there is a predominant focus on individual behavioural changes with limited emphasis on collective action or broader societal responses to sustainability challenges. This reflects a tension that simultaneously critiques unsustainable practices while remaining rooted in neoliberal consumer logics. As a result, these collaborations may promote sustainable consumption but fail to address the social dimensions of sustainability, restricting the potential for fostering a more comprehensive approach to environmental advocacy.

As our societies become increasingly mediated by digital technologies and more essential services and life opportunities move online, it is vital to acknowledge that digital inequalities are still a key issue in the UK. Digital inclusion encompasses more than just access to the devices and data necessary to go online in the first place, including the need for the digital skills, motivation, and understanding to use the internet safely and confidently. However, this first step – i.e. access to devices and data - is still a barrier to inclusion for many. Digital exclusion is intertwined with social and economic inequalities and affordability of devices and data is a key issue, especially in the current cost-of-living crisis. Concern is also growing amid the parallel climate crisis about e-waste and the environmental costs of linear models of consumption of devices, connectivity and digital technologies. Device donation and reuse programmes have the potential to address both the goal of reducing e-waste and of addressing digital inequalities, and there is opportunity in the public sector to achieve these goals both via policy and via leading by example through taking part in such programmes.

This paper presents key findings from a project which, based on a series of interviews with key UK public sector organisations, explored the motivations, enablers, and barriers experienced in determining whether to adopt a more circular approach in how they manage their IT estate, and how this can help them to play their part in improving the lives of digitally excluded people.

The digitalisation of social relations has been precipitated by the mass collection, creation and storage of data through bulking physical infrastructure known as data centres. Data centres and their expansion are as much a certainty in the public imagination as the growth of grass. However, these centres, often obfuscated in their existence by the very terminology used to describe and naturalise their positionality and function, such as “silicon forest”, expose critical fault lines in the localities burdened by their resource-intensive nature, such as post-colonial Ireland. Their very existence in these localities poses the question of what utility they provide, how much of the data within these centres actually serves a daily function, and how much is simply sitting dormant, never to be retrieved again. In conversation with critical discard studies, critical data studies and with a decolonial lens, this research will conceptualise “Data Landfills” as the inevitable consequence of the era of systematic datafication. This paper aims to open a modern-day black box by interpreting and classifying the wasteful industrial practices behind the data that resides within the data centre nexus of post-colonial Ireland and its contemporary developmental landscape. In doing so, this paper challenges the logic of growth that underlies data centre expansion in the face of an unfolding climate and biodiversity crisis. Data landfills provides an alternative framing of data centres’ purported function, re-contextualising our understanding of the utility of data centres by uniquely positioning their data-driven processes in the realm of pollution and waste economies.

Since their emergence, digital technologies, and specifically the internet, have both challenged traditional industries as well as allowed new industries to arise. One such industry, motivated and enabled by the spread of digital media and the internet, is the Digital Afterlife Industry (DAI). The DAI utilizes digital technologies to propose new ways to engage with death and with the dead, and thus, fosters new attitudes towards death, mourning and commemoration. This interplay between death, society and the related technology industry challenges existing perceptions of life and death, invites new professions and arguably requires new regulations.

For millennia, human societies have been searching for immortality. In the contemporary West, these hopes and stories persist, now told using the language of science and technology (Elias, 1985). Computers and the internet specifically have been associated with the idea of perfect memory and data that lives forever (Bush, 1945), allowing individuals to create and keep detailed and retrievable records of their lives for perpetuity (Van Dijck, 2005). These visions materialize with emerging digital and online media practices and services that facilitate the creation of enduring posthumous digital traces that are entangled in everyday communication practices of the living (e.g., Brubaker et al., 2013; Meese et al., 2015). This have contributed to the emergence of a Digital Afterlife Industry (DAI; Bassett, 2022; Öhman & Floridi, 2018; Savin-Baden, 2021), that with the advancement of automated computing, AI and Large Language Models (LLMs), propose responsive technologies to realize the idea of digital immortality.

In this panel, we map the Digital Afterlife Industry, its stakeholders, products, and services as well as some of its consequences and implications in terms of regulation, ethical conduct, and impact on digital media corporations. We explore the practices it potentially replaces, the new practices it enables, and the practices and industries it reshapes.

The first paper explores the field of online immortality services and the social imaginaries enabling their emergence. Drawing on a multimodal analysis of online immortality websites and in-depth interviews with designers and founders of online immortality services, the paper maps and locates these services within the Digital Afterlife Industry and explores the social imaginaries underlying these services (and their failure). The paper then reflects on the discrepancy between the promise of immortality and the actual cultural work the services do (and don’t do), which is not conducive to endurance. Finally, the paper links this discrepancy to questions of media ephemerality, sustainability, and solidarity.

After introducing the main stakeholders and promises of the industry, the second paper explores its potential clientele – the users. Studies of online engagement show that some digital platforms that were never intended to serve mourning purposes have become legitimate venues for engaging with death. On the other hand, most of the technology ventures explicitly developed to facilitate engagement with death do not survive beyond a few years. The second paper addresses these two contradicting trends in the interface of death, society, and technology by studying the attitudes of the general population, i.e., the potential users of the DAI, and their willingness to use the services that digitally defy death and enable to continue the relationships with the dead.

Understanding these conflicting attitudes towards engagement with death online calls for a deconstruction of the different positions of potential stakeholders and their needs, which could lead to new regulatory regimes. While some find comfort in the DAI’s solutions, the third paper considers the potential harm these services may cause. Recent DAI developments, such as ghostbots and DeepFake, attempt to monetize the data of the dead by digitally resuscitating them using machine learning techniques, sometimes without proper consent from users. Such use of the dead's data could cause potential harm and thus require re-thinking about privacy, property, personal data, and reputation. By considering potential benefits and harms, this paper applies a legal framework to suggest new policies in light of emerging technologies that currently lack adequate regulation.

Complementing the discussion on policy and regulation, the final paper considers the rise of a new profession as an intermediary between the users’ needs and the industry’s solutions. Through the lens of professionalization, the paper looks at both the continuities and changes within the traditional death industry and how these shape the digital afterlife industry, including new types of specialists, business models and products. The paper examines the idea of professionalization as a form of social innovation by proposing the potential emergence of digital afterlife leaders. By exploring these emerging professions and the process of professionalization, the paper explains their impact on and shaping of the future structure of the digital afterlife industry, its stakeholders and business models.

The commercialization of digital remains has led to the creation of what Öhman & Floridi (2017) have coined the Digital Afterlife Industry (DAI), defined as “...any activity of production of commercial goods or services that involves online usage of digital remains,” (2017, p. 644). As is explored in their article, an enterprise should meet three specific criteria to fit under the DAI umbrella: 1) they produce goods or services, 2) those goods and services are produced for commercial / for-profit purposes, and 3) those goods or services involve the online usage of digital human remains (2017). Implied in this definition and subsequent criteria, and thus worthy of further exploration, is an additional sub-criterion for online usage that we propose: 3.1) that engagement with or usage of digital remains takes place within networked environments actively engaged in what Bernard Stiegler calls the tertiary retention, or the exteriorization, of memory within mnemotechnologies, or “...large-scale technological systems or networks that organize memories,” (as cited in Prey and Smit, 2018, p. 212). In other words and echoing John Durham Peters and Friedrich Kittler on the matter, mnemotechnologies are world-enabling infrastructures rather than passive vehicles for content (Durham Peters, 2016). By clarifying that online usage takes place within mnemotechnologic environments, imbalances of power imbalance between user and platform may be better understood.

This paper will scrutinise modes through which social media companies create, disseminate and deliver free digital literacy curriculums to educators, parents, caregivers and users. Following the thought of Norbert Elias, we consider these practices as part of broader attempts to refine the manners of human groups according to (contingent) values and beliefs, and which serve the capitalist interests of powerful global institutions seeking to inculcate them in doing so. Using Meta’s GetDigital digital literacy program and Instagram’s User Guides and Programs as empirical case studies, we ask: What is the specific content of social media curriculums of safe, healthy and educated use? And how do these educational resources inculcate certain habits and manners, for whom, and with what implications? Our findings indicate that the type of digital literacy constructed through these resources is a distinctly responsibilized prospect, operating through self-control, and verified in relation to neoliberal behaviourist ideologies. We argue that by loading the pressure on individuals to protect themselves against the ‘toxicity’ of platforms, social media companies seek to absolve themselves from the responsibility to address the potentially harmful aspects of their services themselves. We argue that this constitutes a performance of corporate responsibility, responding to the criticisms that have been levelled at platforms in recent years, while diverting attention away from the exploitative capitalist logics motivating their operations. In highlighting the cultural, normative and political limits of social media corporate curriculums, our paper ultimately highlights the need to develop alternative critical, creative and independent digital literacies in response.

In this paper, we explore how student-generated podcasts that adopt the personal storytelling form that characterizes the genre can serve as an opportunity for self-narrativization. Through an illustrative case study analysis of 5 podcasts, we show how podcasting can serve as an effective measure of student content knowledge acquisition, and, more importantly, a form through which historically disenfranchised students can make sense of their own identities in relationship to educational psychology course concepts. Drawing on scholarship from curriculum theory, cultural studies, and new media studies, we argue that meaningfully integrating podcasting assignments in undergraduate education classes can create the conditions for the reflective, autoethnographic work that serves as a cornerstone of effective teaching practice.

Each year, hundreds of high school seniors record their reactions to being accepted to or rejected from colleges and upload their "College Decision Reaction" videos to YouTube, where they garner millions of views and hundreds of comments, usually from other students with college aspirations. This paper analyzes a curated dataset of these videos (N=100) and their comments to investigate: 1) What technical features, compositional choices, and discourse patterns recur within the landscape of college decision reaction videos, and how do they constitute and sustain an online community? and 2) How is specialized knowledge about the college application and decision processes circulated within this online community? What beliefs and behaviors regarding college choice are perpetuated there? Preliminary analysis of a subset of these videos has revealed patterns of discourse and design that constitute a robust online community where otherwise uncommon knowledge about college choice is circulated and where potentially harmful beliefs and behaviors about the college application process are perpetuated. As college enrollment declines in the U.S., and as inequities in access to college counseling affect first-generation and minoritized students' postsecondary enrollment, it is important to better understand the implications of college decision reaction videos, not only for students but for the higher education industry as a whole, from admissions departments to private tutoring services that advertise heavily within this online space. This paper's analysis of the online community of college decision reaction videos is an important first step to better understanding the changing and increasingly online landscape of college choice.

New forms of facial recognition, aggression detection systems, bus routing optimization software, generative AI detection, and online exam proctoring: the edtech industry is rapidly increasing its influence over schools and universities by introducing new AI-powered products and services. As the ubiquity and complexity of AI systems intensifies, deliberation among practitioners about immediate and long-term risks is becoming ever more challenging.

To help education practitioners and administrators critically explore these systems and deliberate about their consequences, this paper presents the prototype of an edtech assessment toolkit. The toolkit is embedded in a body of work aiming to make technical democracy a key feature in the design, implementation, and use of public sector AI systems. This prototype brings awareness to the potential of participatory design to explore the accountability, transparency, and governance of AI-based systems through collective forms of experimentation.

The paper itself consists of four parts. First, it puts forward a framework for technical democracy to govern AI systems through shared uncertainty. Secondly, it presents how the toolkit has been co-created to encourage collective learning and experimentation. Thirdly, it highlights three tools that have emerged from a series of workshops, collaborations, and dialogues: the counter-archive, the issues register, and the possibilities matrix. The paper finishes by discussing how this methodology produces an exploratory tool for enacting technical democracy design experiments to interrupt the design and implementation of AI into the public sector by making spaces that value dissensus over consensus in an age of automated decision-making.

In the field of platform governance studies, academic researchers increasingly rely on datasets of various sizes. While several large-scale datasets have been created by research groups, collaborative efforts of the community, and by public institutions with data inputs by large platforms, many smaller datasets co-exist. Both smaller and larger datasets would benefit from greater visibility, utilization for new research projects and also from higher levels of interoperability. In this innovative three-step community session, we hope to contribute to the exchange about and increase the uptake of datasets created by and/or available to members of the AoIR community to empirically study social media platform governance. After a short introduction, the first step consists of four timed PechaKucha sessions by researchers presenting key datasets that can be used for platform governance research. The PechaKucha style of the presentations – i.e. 20 slides, which are each displayed for 20 seconds and progress automatically – allows for short, informative inputs. In a next step, we encourage the community to mingle around four demo tables, one for each of the datasets presented, at which the datasets can be accessed and explored together. Those using and or curating the datasets stand ready to demonstrate access and use, and to answer questions. This allows for greater immersion into the datasets, for an exchange about formats and uses of the dataset for specific research, and eventually to lower the barriers of accessing and operationalising the data sets and interfaces later on. The third step brings all present members of the community together into a plenary discussion on (1) what datasets are missing (from this session and generally) and (2) how different kinds of data could be made interoperable for greater effectiveness, including smaller datasets. While a number of different platform governance datasets exist, there still remain gaps and the desire to gather additional data relating, e.g. to content moderation, experiences with platform measures, external enforcement, and more. At the same time, interoperability has not been a great focus in the community. Greater interdisciplinary exchange as part of the session can be a starting point toward a better understanding of what standards and formats (future) datasets require to be most useful when employed in conjunction. For this experimental session, we assembled four presentations of datasets created by both academic researchers and regulatory fiat: the Platform Governance Archive of platform policies of large social media platforms; the Platform Governance Survey Dataset of user attitudes toward content moderation; the EU-mandated (Digital Services Act) DSA Transparency Database of content moderation decisions; and X Community Notes data. We secured experienced presenters and facilitators among the proposers of this session, with plenty of expertise with the creation of platform governance datasets. Notably, the demo tables require only a light setup with a screen (or projector) each to explore the datasets together making it an accessible experimental format to add value for the AoIR community.

Timing: Introduction (5 minutes), PechaKucha presentations (30 minutes), Demo Tables (30 minutes), Discussion: Gaps and Interoperability (25 minutes)

This paper asks how the influencer space and the attention economy got to where they are in 2024. It does so by focusing on an inflection point, the period between roughly 2010-2015 where a vanguard of the advertising sector was largely improvising the early moves of what would eventually reveal itself to be a course changing pivot to digital services. At the same time, a first generation of largely “amateur” content creators were creating new career paths and content genres in the nascent social media entertainment industry. This paper revisits this moment through re-appraisal of a series of interviews conducted with digital advertising industry professionals and content creators during this transitional period as the “blogosphere” became a minor player in a bigger platformized internet economy in which advertising and sponsorship became default models of fundraising, recommendation algorithms and ad tech honed their craft, and content creators developed their dual commercial/authentic identities (Abidin, 2016; Arriagada & Bishop, 2021). In reconsidering this moment, this paper aims to provide insight into the foundations of the structure of the contemporary online economy, the relationship between the advertising industry and the business models for content creation and ad delivery that it supports, and provide historical and empirical detail that contribute to debates and questions about labour and value in new mediums.

This paper investigates messaging by smaller businesses in the hair and beauty industries in South Africa who use targeted ads to promote products and services to Facebook and Instagram users in South Africa. These ads are currently not considered “political” ads, despite the fact that racialised notions of hair and beauty have played and continue to play a key role in white supremacist discourses in South Africa. Using the Facebook Ad Library, we obtained a purposive sample of ads posted to Meta platforms over a six month period (N=558) by 99 different advertisers whose ads matched the query “hair”. We review image-based adverts in this sample, asking how visual signifiers of gender and ethnicity address potential consumers and represent their hair. Multimodal content analysis was used with the aim of identifying current micro-targeting practices on the platforms. Our analysis of the messaging about hair in the ads found hegemonic racial ideologies and binary gendering in campaigns addressing ethnically differentiated audiences of women in SA. The relative absence of men from the messaging suggested that the burdens and pleasures of hair care and maintenance remain distinctly feminised while the hair industry is actively involved in production of gender. WoC were targeted with messaging which, at best, promoted a new aesthetic or promised to save money or time. At worst, it was promoting harmful products and perpetuating racialised discourses. Built on dataveillance, such micro-targeting may be fuelling feedback loops that further entrench the country’s extreme racialised inequality.

The algorithmic and individualised nature of advertising on social media - and the intentionally opaque and unobservable design of advertising algorithms - makes them difficult to study. We turn to participatory methods, working with 204 young Australians as 'citizen scientists' to collect 5169 screenshots of 'unhealthy' advertising on social media. Through SMS chat over a one week period, we engaged our participants in 'algorithmic gossip' to theorise why certain ads appeared on their feeds, how the algorithms serving ads worked, and what they thought about them. Some believed ‘the algorithm’ accurately targeted ads based on their interests and behaviors, while others felt these algorithms 'missed the mark'. Participants theorised the impact of search histories, friendship networks, interests, time of day/week/year, location, age, gender, and more in how advertising algorithms worked. Our study revealed complexities in participants' perceptions of ad targeting and how algorithms function. We highlight the need for greater transparency and regulation regarding advertising on social media, especially concerning unhealthy industries. Participants expressed concerns about manipulative and intrusive advertising practices, emphasising the importance of platform responsibility and centering young people's expertise in discussions on advertising regulation.

This paper presents findings from a larger mixed methods research project that examines the exposure, awareness and perceptions of young people to gambling marketing through and around live sport in two European countries. This paper is informed by the findings of an earlier set of focus groups with young people, but in this paper we focus on a qualitative analysis of gambling marketing communications around live sports events on Instagram from a number of major gambling companies. We collected a purposeful sample of posts, including image (N: 99) and video (N: 79), shared between October 2023 and early January 2024 from 7 major gambling brands’ Instagram accounts.

This study provides important insights into how gambling brands use Instagram, and potentially bypass existing regulations to prevent gambling communications being viewed by children and young people under 18 years. It furthers a growing body of evidence that evidences the extent of gambling marketing that young people are exposed to and how gambling companies exploit sports fandom to target both gamblers and non-gamblers alike and to (re)brand the gambling industry as a normal leisure industry.

Indian women activists are increasingly integrating digital strategies in their fight against the burning issue of sexual violence. Their digital strategies help them navigate the Indian socio-digital landscape, which is an extension of the sociocultural context they live in. There are limited studies in the area of digital feminist activism emerging from the Global South, especially from the context of post-colonial India. There is a concerning gap in the literature on this topic when it comes to understanding the factors that shape women's digital activism against sexual violence. Therefore while addressing this gap, this paper investigates digital activism by Indian women against sexual violence under the overarching question of; what are the rhetorical practices of digital feminist protest by Indian women activists against sexual violence? Anchored in the framework of postcolonial feminism, I examine the journey of the local Indian women to digital activism; to understand their motivation and access to digital technology. My interviews with 20 Indian women activists from diverse backgrounds within the Indian landscape reveal the factors that shape their journey to digital activism. This paper contributes to understanding the role class, status, and geographical location play in women's journey to digital activism against sexual violence, within a post-colonial Global South country as India.

With each technological advancement comes opportunities for misuse that can impact individuals’ well-being. This is particularly true for marginalized individuals and groups, as certain technologies are exploited to inflict harm on vulnerable people, extending beyond the digital realm.

Drawing upon semi-structured interviews with 16 participants, this paper considers the misuse of Apple's AirDrop to publicly sexually harass young Jewish and Palestinian girls through wireless technology: notably, through the unsolicited sending of sexually explicit images and text. We conceptualize this misuse of AirDrop as a form of tech-facilitated sexual violence ([TFSV]; Henry & Powell, 2017).

AirDrop's misuse led to the victims' feelings of fear and rage, occasionally leading to re-traumatization. Many felt watched and followed, and generally unsafe, in public spaces. All participants, however, demonstrated resistance: notably, by forming digital 'safe spaces' or changing their AirDrop names to gender neutral, or men's ones, to deter would-be online predators. Despite these demonstrations of agency, however, many women began to avoid public spaces.

In our paper, we consider how Apple's tech can be re-conceptualized as "trauma informed" (Little, 2023) -- or as seeking to avoid traumatization in the first place. We seek to responsibilize tech companies, rather than victim-blaming victims or asking that they shoulder the burden of avoiding this form of wireless TFSV.

Recently, while there has been some attention to the issues online harassment in higher education, the impacts of online sexual harassment have been lost within the broader focus. There is negligible research looking at these specific experiences within Indian universities. To address this gap, this paper explores three different but interconnected forms of online sexual harassment - image-based sexual abuse, online chat rooms, and trolling in the context of Indian universities. Following the works of Liz Kelly (1987) and Clare McGlynn, Erika Rackley, and Ruth Houghton (2017), this paper establishes the importance of understanding online sexual harassment as a continuum of other forms of offline sexual violence having physical, mental, and financial impacts on survivors, deeply affecting their sense of safety. In doing so, this paper attempts to develop a materialist understanding of online sexual harassment in Indian universities in turn demonstrating the confluence of India’s patriarchal and casteist society and an authoritarian state who use technology as a powerful disciplining tool to push women and queer people out of digital public spaces. This research attempts to establish that this disciplining and silencing of women and queer people are essential for the spread of both techno-capitalism and Brahmanical Hindutva nationalism.

This work explores the intersection of toxicity and symbolic violence as fundamental concepts for understanding two critical dimensions of online violence: its propagation and legitimation. Drawing from Critical Discourse Analysis, we emphasize language's role in negotiating power relationships, demonstrating its significance in shaping social practices and power dynamics. Building on our previous work on gender toxicity, we investigate how toxicity becomes a form of legitimizing violent discourses.Further, we present a framework categorizing violence legitimation into "discursive structure" and "spreadable structure." Discursive structures encompass implicit and explicit violence, including humor, stereotyping, and name-calling, revealing strategies employed in violent discourse. Spreadable structures, including polarization and toxicity, explore how discourse spreads on platforms, affecting visibility and influencing dominant perspectives. The understanding of these categories requires consideration of social and infrastructural power dynamics within the online context.

This research explores the findings on the social media engagement and advocacy activities of 52 women’s health NGOs from across the world during the year of 2019, amid an environment of hostility and attacks of far-right groups against women’s rights, and particularly in areas such as women’s sexuality and female bodies. These findings are only a small part of a larger four year study, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), which examined the advocacy communication activities of NGOs working on women’s health in the US, Europe, Latin America, Brazil and India.

Questions included how NGOs’ communication strategies reflect on their communication activities, and how they combine offline and online media to advocate on SRHR. The research made use of a mixed methods approach which included in depth interviews with 50 CEOs from the organizations as well as a short survey applied to the communication directors of these NGOs, including from Care International UK to Anis Brazil. This was combined with critical discourse analysis (CDA) of their institutional websites, as well as their social media engagement on social network platforms. This paper focuses on the CDA results of the social media engagement of the organizations conducted during the months of March and April 2019, when a total of 1.505 tweets were collected. Findings show an emphasis on ‘hard fact’s, including NGO journalism devices such as ‘fact checking’, however with a growth in use of more human interest stories, particularly making use of storytelling, to reach out to larger audiences.

Abortion is a common and safe medical procedure with a long history of practice within the U.S. Yet, inaccurate and misleading information around abortion persists, including falsehoods about the accessibility and legality of abortion related healthcare, myths around long-term physical and mental impacts, and misleading descriptions of abortion procedures (Sanz-Suarez-Lledo & Álvarez Gálvez, 2021; Patev & Hood, 2021; Sharevski et al., 2023). The prevalence of inaccuracies has been exacerbated by the patchwork of state laws governing access to abortion in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113) in May 2022 (Harris, 2022; Rice et. Al, 2022). Despite extensive documentation of abortion-related misinformation in online and offline spaces (Bryant & Levi, 2021; Sharevski et al., 2023), and calls of concern from healthcare practitioners about such content (Thomas, 2022), little academic research exists documenting and examining how misleading abortion information impacts the everyday work of healthcare providers and others working within abortion healthcare. Accordingly, this research project looks to address these current gaps to properly document the impacts of misleading information on reproductive healthcare providers.

This study investigates how sexuality experts communicate sexual advice on online platforms and how audiences interact with and perceive these experts. Through a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics inherent in this communication process, we seek to gain insights into the evolving landscape of sexual advice and health in the digital age. Furthermore, our objective is to address a notable gap in this body of literature by incorporating how audiences engage with this content. We conducted a thematic analysis of TikTok videos and comment sections, combined with in-depth interviews with sexuality experts, to explore how experts build credibility amongst their audience, and how audiences engage with their content and evaluate expertise and credibility. Preliminary results suggest that creators employ various strategies when their expertise is questioned, including responding to comments, crafting replies to videos, and utilizing humor to connect with users. Audience members also play a vital role in validating creators' expertise. We also found that sexual health advice was not solely coming from creators, but also from those engaging in comments, fostering a culture of advice related to the video’s theme, challenging the conventional top-down hierarchy in sexual education where expertise is unilaterally shared. Ultimately, our study aligns with this year’s conference theme – examining the emergence and continuation of industries like sexual health education – highlighting the dynamics that arise within online spaces.

The Indian state’s move towards the digitalisation of the health sector has serious implications for how health care is availed and experienced by the people, especially the poor. When biometric identity systems are established for authorisation and verification, people are forced to meet the demands of technical systems for accessing healthcare. What kinds of relations are formed through these biometric-based information assemblages? What are the materialities of patient data and experiences within these information assemblages? How health data is organised, accessed, and controlled within the territorialities of the digital? This paper will look into the rise of datafication of health information and the making of biometric-based Unique Health Identification Number (UHID) in India with the case of the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) and the subsequent Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA). The ABHA number is a 14-digit identifier distinguishing individuals within India's digital healthcare system. It is a unique identity linked to Aadhaar, facilitating enrolment in Personal Health Records (PHR), and the public insurance scheme -Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY). With a case study of the South Indian states of Kerala and Puducherry, the paper investigates the norms of governmentalities in datafication by looking into the requirements and conditions of enrolment into the databases for accessing healthcare. The paper looks at datafication as a technique for population management and problematises how enrolment into health identity systems becomes a condition for citizens' rights to access healthcare.

This decade has been characterized by a deep crisis of trust and legitimacy, which is linked in complex ways to digital technologies and modes of communication. This panel focuses on the role of visuality in trust. It starts from the premise that images are increasingly used to express reliability and trustworthiness, increase engagement in online environments, while also being met with increasing suspicion across platforms. We propose five linked papers that explore how visual digital trust is experienced and made sense of by social media users, content creators and platforms. We are finding that trust is often too abstract for social media users to be able to address directly, rather it is experienced and articulated via norms and practices of (in)authenticity, relatability, coherence, credibility, authority. Thus, our papers focus on these various aspects, experiences and components of visual digital trust moving from perceptions of in/authenticity (paper 1) and social media users’ practices of distributed seeing at its service (paper 2), to users perceptions of creators’ commercial motivations and how that intersects with trust (paper 3), to questions of embodied trust in representations of gym bodies (paper 4) and finally the negotiations of trustworthiness in the context of YouTube’s “Health” program (paper 5).

Critical research on digital technologies–from platforms to new AI applications–has primarily focused on the large tech companies that develop and operate them, as well as on their impact on end users. There are, of course, good reasons for doing so. For one, it is clear that only a handful of American and Chinese tech companies–Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu–control the computational infrastructures underpinning most popular platforms, mobile applications, and AI services (Jia et al. 2018; Luitse & Denkena 2021; Plantin et al. 2018). Hence, these companies set the technological standards on which a wide variety of other companies, public institutions, and societal organizations rely. Furthermore, leading tech companies not only wield infrastructural power, but they are also dominant economic actors. Connecting content and service providers in virtually every economic sector, they control key markets and economic processes (Gawer & Srnicek 2021; Moore & Tambini 2018; Poell et al. 2021). As such, they can be understood as prominent political actors at the center of the online world (Van Dijck et. al 2018; Culpepper & Thelen 2019). Finally, concerns about the impact of new digital technologies on end-users are also fully justified, given that they rely on large scale data collection, are fundamentally privacy invasive, and tend to privilege specific types of users, content, and services over others (Hintz et al. 2018).

While such critical insights and perspectives are vital, there is still a limited understanding of the larger political economy in which digital technologies are developed and employed. There is especially too little attention for the state as the key actor in shaping the digital political economy. Research that has focussed on the state has primarily been concerned with the use of data and commercial technologies in state surveillance (Andrejevic 2019; Dencik et al. 2018;) and with ideological shifts in governance towards machine learning logics and dataism (Fourcade and Gordon 2020). Although these are clearly urgent issues, this outlook is too narrow to understand how states shape the distribution of power and opportunities in the digital realm and how they are also shaped by such distribution. As this panel will examine, states promote particular economic rationalities, invest or fail to invest in public infrastructures and services, develop legal and policy frameworks that enable specific types of labor relations and business models, etc. At the same time, the state is a central focus for technology providers who seek to embed themselves within central functions of the state and establish long-term and complex relations across areas of traditional state power. As such, states both shape and are shaped by the broader political economic environment in which platforms, mobile applications, and new AI services are developed and operate.

The papers in this panel bring together critical perspectives on the relationship between states and digital technologies. They explore how commercial platforms and AI come to be embedded in the state and wider society, with what consequences, and how we might imagine state-tech relations differently. The first paper outlines the terms under which welfare states become interwoven with third-party services by leveraging infrastructural power - with significant ideological implications. This theme is further developed in the second paper that argues that contemporary state-tech relations mimics a tenant-landlord relationship that risks displacing public infrastructure. Continuing this discussion, the third paper explores the role of the state in facilitating such a displacement, making a case for a continuity rather than discontinuity in the marketisation of public services. Finally, in the fourth paper, a call is made to resuscitate a public infrastructure imaginary and radically transform the role of the state and models of regulation in the platform economy by advancing an ‘attention as a scarce public resource’ rationale.

References

Gawer, A. R., & Srnicek, N. (2021). Online platforms: Economic and societal effects. Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA) European Parliament.

Jia, K., Kenney, M., Mattila, J., & Seppala, T. (2018). The application of artificial intelligence at Chinese digital platform giants: Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. ETLA reports, (81).

Luitse, D., & Denkena, W. (2021). The great transformer: Examining the role of large language models in the political economy of AI. Big Data & Society, 8(2), 20539517211047734.

Plantin, J. C., Lagoze, C., Edwards, P. N., & Sandvig, C. (2018). Infrastructure studies meet platform studies in the age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society, 20(1), 293-310.

The concept of virtual celebrity realises the ambition of manufactured pop idols that inspired Japan’s idol industry in the 1970s, and spread across East Asia soon thereafter. Today, the term encompasses a variety of genres with local histories and applications, including Vocaloids, virtual idols, vTubers, virtual anchors, and virtual influencers. Although virtual celebrity was once considered a niche interest reserved for otaku and dedicated fans of ACG (Anime, Comics and Games), recent shifts in government priorities, technological innovations, and heightened capital investment have brought virtual celebrity into mainstream view. This panel considers the various organisations, technologies, platforms, labour, and stakeholders involved in East Asia’s flourishing virtual celebrity industries. Its five papers explore the commercial, cultural, and symbolic value of virtual celebrities across and beyond East Asia, examining historical antecedents; cross-industry collaborations; processes of cultural commodification; industrial practices; and emergent media discourses. Introducing cases from Japan, Korea, and China, the panel's regional focus draws attention to the “transnational” (Iwabuchi, 2014) flows of virtual celebrity across borders, languages, industries, platforms, and technologies.

Against the backdrop of wider systems of self-branding and self-optimization configuring contemporary work, this roundtable considers the particular impact of platform logics on academic labour. Universities (not unlike platforms) have long been considered cultural sites of struggle as participants vie for the legitimation of their work, their communities, and their systems of value. Terms like “invisible universities” (Wellman et al., 2006) “academic influence” (Stewart, 2015) and “networked celebrity” (Turner & Larson, 2015) have underscored some of these uneasy couplings--if not contestations--about the production and dissemination of knowledge amid marketplace constraints. Yet such tensions surrounding academic visibility have come to the fore in recent years. During the pandemic, the demand for educational connection elevated the "platform" as an anti-heroine as academics were forced to reckon with new digital connections while navigating harassment. At the same time, universities are encouraging academics to engage in public scholarship in earnest.

Such new demands raise questions about where to draw the lines between research for public consumption and what Sophie Bishop (2023) conceptualizes as influencer creep, wherein influencer cultures made inroads into various domains of cultural life. Can we draw these lines when academics are increasingly exhorted to be visible, marketable, and build their own self-brands? Recognizing traits in ourselves and practices that we see mirrored in the influencers we study, we propose a roundtable to discuss the promises, perils, and pitfalls of influencer creep in the academy.

This roundtable builds upon autoethnographic work about academic navigation of discriminatory moderation practices (Are, 2022; 2023), Zoom-bombing (Tran, 2021; 2023) and more by the participants, all of whom are public-facing scholars across platform governance, journalism, games, and influencer labour. Together, this roundtable explores what happens when self-branding, scholarly vulnerability and digital visibility converge.

In recent years, visual journalism has embraced a new form of storytelling alongside photographs and videos: the photographic GIF (graphics interchange format). Despite its association with humor on social media, the GIF has unexpectedly become a legitimate tool for documenting disasters and tragedies in online news. This challenges the traditional solemn tone of journalism, as the GIF's short, repetitive, and silent nature is reminiscent of humorous content rather than serious news representation.

Photojournalism traditionally utilizes still images and videos for narrative storytelling, each having distinct characteristics and narrative possibilities. In contrast, the photographic GIF emerges as a hybrid format, combining photography and film elements. Its unique attribute of the looped movement stands in overt contrast with conventional news formats but reflects the transformations in visual news production following the widespread use of smartphones and social media. These changes shifted news consumption habits and have caused news organizations to adopt new designs and forms for online news outlets.

This research focuses on the photographic GIF as a new visual form in online news, particularly in representing tragic events. It uses semiotic visual analysis and interviews with senior online news editors to explore the uses, meanings, and editorial considerations behind GIF production in newsrooms. The findings reveal the GIF's expansion beyond its initial contexts, demonstrating its legitimacy in the journalistic sphere and uncovering its means of conveying informative and traumatic content. The research underscores how the digital journalism industry adapts to the contemporary environment by integrating GIFs into storytelling practices.

Wars have always been mediated. However, the tools and techniques for mediation, facilitation, and creation of knowledge about the war have significantly changed in the last decade with the fast growth of new media and technologies. Understanding the details of military operations by civilians has become possible nowadays with social media and digital technology that change people's perception of war. This research focuses on Ukrainian Telegram channels that position themselves as open-source intelligence (OSINT) investigators and provide detailed information for civilians on types of missiles or drones in the air during the ongoing attack. They use information from military and open sources to facilitate the war for the general public and mediate the attacks. The paper explores how those Telegram channels became essential players in military communication during the active phase of the war in Ukraine. It also discusses the emergence of a new digital industry of monitoring the air in Ukraine for war participation and mediation. The research uses a digital ethnographic observation method to explore the ten most popular Ukrainian Telegram channels that provide information about attacks and examine types of messages, framing, wording, and other information-specificities for participatory warfare and constructing knowledge about the war. Also, textual and visual analysis of the messages and comments allows us to identify patterns in the work of those Telegram channels. This paper is a work in progress.

COVID-19 has been one of the most disruptive and devastating social and epidemiological events the world has experienced in the past century. The untimely death of loved ones, coupled with lockdowns and social isolation, impacts people's physical and mental health severely. In this study, I focus on stories about the pandemic from Gaza written by Palestinian youth and published online by the nonprofit organisation We Are Not Numbers between 2020-2024.

Scholarships on the uses of digital media during the pandemic show how they create supportive, safe spaces to discuss the hardships caused by the disease and mitigate trauma. Gaza is a unique case study because the arrival of COVID-19 generated a unique situation of a double lockdown; Gazans were unable to travel and receive quality medical care for more than a decade before the pandemic started due to a devastating military siege imposed by Israel in 2007. Therefore, digital media has crucially become their only access to a virtual world while their physical world is continuously shrinking. In my presentation, I will conceptualise the double lockdown and argue for the liberatory potential of digital media. I will contend that the multimodal storytelling of Gazan youth inspires hope and resilience in a place usually defined by despair. The digital platform We Are Not Numbers invites visitors to experience Gaza through the eyes of ordinary people. Visitors can modestly contribute to Gaza's struggle for a healthy and free life by considering how the pandemic's harm is multiplied by a suffocating military occupation.

This research examines the concept of "disconnective action" during crises, positing it as a necessary counterpart to "connective action" (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012). While digital media is typically lauded for fostering connectivity during socio-political controversies, it also presents affordances for disconnectivity, such as unfriending, unfollowing, and banning. This project aims to understand the dynamics and implications of digital disconnection, particularly during crises that serve as catalysts for revealing divergent opinions among social network users (Sibona, 2014; John & Dvir-Gvirsman, 2015; John & Gal, 2018). The theoretical backdrop of this study involves "disconnective power" (Light & Cassidy, 2014), which refers to the ability of dominant actors to employ digital media as tools for political, cultural, and social fragmentation. The research proposes that this form of power is particularly evident in the strategic use of digital technologies to isolate political systems and promote societal disintegration. Accordingly, the new forms of propaganda utilize disconnective affordances to undermine cross-conflict horizontal networks. By framing disconnection as a performative "speech act" (Austin,1962; Butler, 1990) and examining the role of social media as both a unifying and divisive force, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of digital interaction in times of socio-political unrest. Over five years, data on public unfriending announcements were collected, particularly from Russian-speaking Facebook users during the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war. The research reveals the dominant logics behind publicized disconnective actions and the influence of individual users in initiating broader disconnective trends.

The algorithmic management of gig work on digital platforms is both similar to and distinct from Taylorist forms of organising work. Drawing on interviews with over 300 gig workers on ride-hailing, food delivery, home service and other platforms in India in 2023, this paper argues that algorithmic management reduces worker control over the outcomes (in work allocation, wage, disciplinary action) and routines (volume, hours and location) of work. Further, this decline in control stemming partially from algorithmic management is compounded by the specific forms of alienation that gig workers face from platform management at one end and customers at the other.

Focusing on the Chinese context, this investigation addresses digital labor platforms that mediate interactions between workers and clients as specific instances of social media. This article addresses the evolving landscape of domestic labor in contemporary China, specifically focusing on female internal migrant workers - commonly referred to as “Ayi’s” - in the gig economy. More specifically, by employing a feminist intersectional lens, we analyze how digital labor platforms broker migrant Ayi’s subjectivities and address how these rural-to-urban migrants may create a new narrative for themselves. Based on in-depth interviews with 15 female migrant workers alongside a walkthrough study of three digital labor platforms, Ayi’s are found to represent themselves by branding themselves. This form of self-marketing offers the potential to transform their visibility in public from perceived low-skilled laborers to “pre-packaged” professionals. While enhancing visibility, and thereby improving the standing of some, the representational practices of Ayi’s also offer insights into newly emergent forms of vulnerability and marginalization, shaped by gender, migrant status, and socioeconomic class.

Platforms play an increasingly prominent role in today’s economy. As big tech companies like Alphabet, Meta and Alibaba leverage their size and access to large amounts of data to provide value for their users and shareholders, platforms have begun to emerge within the gig economy. The gig economy is where individuals rent out their labour, and has rapidly grown in recent years. This paper focuses on Fiverr, an online freelancing platform in the gig economy that allows individuals to sell their services to anyone who can access it. We undertake a longitudinal case study, exploring and analysing how Fiverr has developed its business to provide a number of services that facilitate the operation of the platform. We explain growth drivers, innovation strategies and show how they favour the buyer, which has created tensions in the operation of the platform. Additionally, we contextualize Fiverr, and online freelancing more generally, within two major socio-technical developments in recent years, namely the Covid-19 pandemic and the rise of generative AI, showing the turbulent times such platforms are currently facing.

The intersection of gender dynamics and platform-based gig work emerges as a pivotal, albeit under-researched, domain in contemporary scholarship. This article seeks to bridge this gap by looking into the gendered dimensions of the food delivery sector in China’s gig economy. By adopting "friction" as an analytical lens, this study aims to illuminate the nuanced encounters, challenges, and systemic barriers female delivery workers face within the predominantly male-oriented food delivery industry. We examine how control operates through various social structures—family, workplace, and societal environment—creating friction in the daily work experiences of female platform workers. We reveal that the gendered division of labor within families limits women's commitment to platform work, putting them at a disadvantage against algorithmic control favoring stable workers. Female food delivery riders, in particular, face gendered segregation during breaks, hindering camaraderie and knowledge exchange with male counterparts. Their gender becomes a salient identity, subjecting them to sexist slurs and suspicion from security guards. Different from existing studies on solidarity and resistance among gig workers, these female riders view platform work as a means to enhance economic independence but face constant setbacks thanks to their female gender. We argue that these frictions women workers experience in the platform economy are not only shaped by algorithmic control but conditioned with long-existing social structures, which further marginalize and isolate women in gig worker mobilization and resistance.

Although the World Health Organization put an end to the enduring state of pandemic public health emergency in May 2023, the COVID-19 virus remains an everyday reality and risk around the world. Cases continue to surge in many countries, but experts suggest that the virus is transitioning from a pandemic into an endemic phase, meaning that it will be indefinitely present in human populations. Through this project, I argue that COVID-19 has had important social implications that will remain just as endemic as the virus itself. More specifically, I study the relationship between pandemic cultures and ideals of identity performance on social media in 2024, five years into this ongoing crisis. This research is based in cross-platform scroll back interviews with U.S. American social media users. The interviews involve inviting research participants to scroll backward on their social media profiles, co-analyzing and reinterpreting their profile histories in the present. Preliminary findings suggest that while many participants have retired strategic self-representational practices that they developed to manage emergent social expectations during early COVID, perceived shifts in their values surrounding digital identity have proven more enduring. I draw on these findings to theorize about the significance of unending crisis events for identity performance.

A large mutual aid culture in India emerged during COVID-19 pandemic. As COVID-19 presented a massive shock and a huge organizational challenge to the formal healthcare system, several informal, online information and communication organizations emerged. Some of these online communities were large in membership and target areas whereas some emerged as smaller communities targeting local calls for help in smaller cities with limited access to resources. Under the lockdown, the formation and functions of these communities occurred almost exclusively through online communication across multiple platforms, both within the group and with outside stakeholders including patients, vendors, and healthcare authorities. To understand how and why the sort of organizations observed in India during COVID-19 would emerge or how they navigate organizational challenges posed by severe resource constraints, this paper studies the phenomenon of the emergence and function of online mutual aid communities in India through interviews with people who actively participated in these communities. Understanding how these mutual aid groups not only minimize the organizational challenges in the healthcare system during the pandemic by bridging the information gap between online and offline communities but also through a variety of organizational practices and principles managed to serve other purposes such as providing social support to fellow group members and caring for a marginalized community adds significantly to the understanding of how resilience is fostered in online communities during crises in the global South.

The Covid-19 pandemic has significantly amplified the dissemination of conspiracy theories. In response, social media platforms have intensified their efforts in content moderation, prompting conspiracy theorists to seek refuge on platforms like Telegram. Our study examines conspiracy theorists' perceptions of and misconceptions about content moderation practices on different social media platforms, as discussed in Telegram channels of the “Querdenken” community. Different narratives emerge in relation to the platforms discussed (Telegram, Facebook, and YouTube). Our findings provide insight into how conspiracy theorists construe disruptions in their communication channels, intertwining notions of platform power with their conspiratorial worldview.

As the Covid-19 pandemic spread globally, activist-led mutual aid efforts quickly emerged all over the world to help people access food and other basic necessities. Mutual aid activists relied on multi-layered digital practices to coordinate their efforts, largely by employing corporate digital technologies. In conversation with the literature on digital activism and drawing on 40 interviews with activists in the US, Italy and the UK, in this paper I examine how Covid-19 mutual aid complicates our understanding of the intersection of activism and digital technologies and of the online/offline divide. I show that contradictory experiences of the digital marked this wave of solidarity activism. First, while mutual aid was fully digital, especially given the necessity to organize while physically distancing, it was also embodied, because activists physically had to come together to prepare and distribute food and PPE. At the same time, there was also a new appreciation for digital-only activism as an equally valid form of engagement. Second, some mutual aid groups adopted very sophisticated tech-enabled systems, which required significant labor to manage and had a steep learning curve. Other groups, however, relied on less sophisticated tech practices (e.g. Whatsapp chats and phone calls). Even in a moment of heightened centrality of digital communication, such as the pandemic, the offline was still crucial. I argue that we can make sense of these somewhat contradictory aspects through activists’ commitment to care as overarching principle, which oriented them towards developing more inclusive movements, built on overlapping modalities of activism.

In striving for equity, it is key to understand enabling and impeding factors of educational and digital participation of (marginalised) youth. Even though formal education is often focused on in the discussion on educational inequalities, non-formal and informal education need to be further considered, especially with regard to digitalised societies (Jeong et al. 2018; Spanhel 2020). Applying a broad understanding of education as a transformation of self-world-relations (Jörissen/Marotzki 2009), non-formal educational arrangements that revolve around digital media activities potentially contribute to educational and digital equity among youth by enabling processes of learning and experiences of self-efficacy.

Therefore, this paper focuses on investigating the accessibility of educational participation from a marginalised youth perspective: Do non-formal digitised educational arrangements recognise (marginalised) youth realities? Our research aims at identifying conditions that enable resp. limit participation of (marginalised) youth in relation to their orientations within two non-formal educational institutions that specialise in digital media activities.

Group Discussions are implemented with youth who take part in the researched educational arrangements and with youth who belong to the potential target group but do not participate. In Group Discussions, depictions and narrations are unfolded by the participants. Analysing Group Discussions with the Documentary Method allows for the reconstruction of collective patterns of orientations that influence everyday practice (Bohnsack 2010). Based on data extracts presented at AoIR 2024, conditions of participation in non-formal digitised educational arrangements from a (marginalised) youth perspective will be discussed.

Digital platforms and services are making inroads into the everyday lives of even very young children. As with many other domains of life, children’s learning and education are increasingly digitised through ‘educational technology’ software, or more commonly EdTech. The rise of the EdTech industry provokes new questions about children’s education in the digital age. Methodologically, studying the EdTech industry for children largely falls in the field of the political economy of digital childhood, an interdisciplinary research agenda underpinned by an overall interest in understanding the critical roles of institutions, especially companies and governments, in producing and distributing digital services that shape children’s and families’ everyday consumption of digital technologies. This paper focuses on the methodological offerings of a design-based method for researching the political economy of digital childhood. We explore how a design-based approach is compatible with the research interests of a political economy perspective by drawing on the processes and findings of a collaborative design intervention study which aimed to conceptualise and build a database of EdTech companies and products for young children living in Australia. Based on the findings of the Database, this paper illustrates how the design-based approach employed in this study enabled the researchers to identify the key EdTech industry trends and characteristics, surfaces the power asymmetry between EdTech corporations and individual users, and provoke new ideas and imaginaries among parents and educators to address these challenges.

This paper examines how private tutoring is changing with a new digital reality. Using the empirical case of Egypt, which features an aggressive educational digitalization, a disruptive global pandemic and a formidable tutoring industry, it explores how digital platforms are reconfiguring the shape, dynamics and logics of private tutoring, and how they are restructuring the roles, practices and identities of private tutors. Building on three years of digital ethnographic fieldwork, this paper makes two arguments.

First, it contends that social media platforms and digital learning platforms are profoundly penetrating Egypt’s private tutoring landscape in a process of platformization. As opposed to adding an online type of tutoring, this platformization is reconfiguring private tutoring and transforming it Polymorphous Tutoring. In this new modality, digital platforms are simultaneously co-existing and tightly co-constituted with in-person tutoring in a functional complementarity that utilizes various business models and economic logics towards commercial ends. Second, within this nascent polymorphous tutoring, digital platforms are reconfiguring the labor of private tutors and transforming them to Education Technopreneurs. Those technopreneurs are becoming social media-influencers, micro-celebrities and content creators in education; are pivoting into lucrative business models rooted in surveillance capitalism; and are becoming an elite class not of individual actors but institutional players that are entrenching the roots, amplifying the scope, and extending the ubiquity of polymorphous tutoring. With its digital sociological perspective from the global South, this paper raises critical questions with regards to digital inequalities, educational privatization, the role of schools, and unhinged datafication.

This article extends a theorization of ‘the virtual’, developing from earlier feminist new-materialist work on bodies and digital images, to consider the implications of selfie-editing apps like Facetune for navigating selfhood in digital visual cultures. We draw on qualitative data, including in-depth semi-structured interviews, photo elicitation, and participatory selfie-editing group workshops, to develop a new theorization of the process of editing one’s self-image, exploring how notions of bodily ‘perfectibility’ are becoming increasingly normalized through everyday technologies and digital visual cultures. First, we explore how cosmetic surgery was discussed by participants as a way of demarcating a boundary between the material ‘real’ and edited ‘ideal’ at stake in selfie-editing; but significantly, surgery was also metaphorically conceptualized by participants as ‘like editing in real life’, drawing datafication into everyday discourses and conceptualisation of selves/bodies. We then discuss dissonances experienced by participants in failing to recognize the physical self in the ‘improved’ (normalized) edited self, and regret experienced with the data loss of unedited self-images. The case studies we analyse here help us think through: what happens to concepts of bodies and selves when they are viewed primarily through the virtual lens of smartphone cameras? How are boundaries of physical fleshy selves negotiated and produced through digital editing practices? What does this mean for how bodies and selves are understood and experienced in the digital era? We suggest that the broader process of engaging with a digitally-mediated and editable image of oneself represents a potentially significant shift in the dynamics of selfhood.

When surveyed and interviewed about digital peer support for mental health, LGBTQ+ young people in Australia, aged 16-25 years, most commonly named Instagram as the most supportive social media platform. Most of the 36 interview participants described how Instagram affords mental health support in varied ways, from regular engagement with supportive friends, to following and engaging with accounts that promote LGBTQ+ mental health. The feature of Close Friend Stories was particularly highlighted as affording easy access to friendship support when needed, and allowed a signaling of support without having to ask for it. Many discussed how Close Friend Stories afforded ‘mental health posting’ – for themselves and/or friends – that allayed concerns about burdening friends with mental health struggles, and offered assurance that only friends with the capacity to offer support could do so. This paper argues that the Close Friends feature operates through friendship’s ‘ambient co-presence’ on Instagram, among young LGBTQ+ users, offering space for vulnerable posting. This paper engages with theories of digital co-presence and intimacy, to consider the intimate logic of vulnerable posting and subsequent support among LGBTQ+ young people who use Instagram.

Snapchat has long been a pivotal space for youth digital intimate and sexual cultures, as well as gendered and sexual risks and harms. Despite being one of the most widely used social media platforms among youth in England and America, there has been little in-depth research that connects Snapchat’s unique features and affordances with an analysis of young users’ practices, behaviours, and experiences on the platform. Responding to this gap, our paper explores our mixed-methods research findings on British young people’s diverse social, sexual, and intimate experiences on Snapchat. We explore how Snapchat’s unique features, such as disappearing images (“Snaps”), algorithmic friend recommendations (“Quick Adds”), and user engagement metric ("Snapscores”), form new conditions and environments for young people’s experiences of digital courtship, sexting, and sexual and gender-based violence. In addition, we contextualise youth user experiences with Snapchat’s community guidelines, safeguards, and protections for youth, which we argue fail to understand or address the actual lived experiences of youth users. We conclude with recommendations for interventions dedicated to increasing platform-specific digital literacy (particularly for parents, policymakers, and educators), and preventing and responding to youth experiences of online gendered risks and harm—while upholding their digital and sexual rights.

This experimental session offers two sequential workshops* during the course of the conference where participants learn about and experience hands-on practice making things with others. These creative practice research modalities function as prompts and provocations for participants in public engagement or participatory action research. Playful and engaging, these industrious methods can help bring a diversity of practices to the table and open up ways of knowing, especially when conducting community based or advocacy research. But to be effective, they also require safer spaces and expert facilitation, an approach that grows from researchers experimenting with different techniques, repeatedly and iteratively with different groups and projects, adapting to each situation. The practices we demo in the workshops reflect multiple strategic interventions that foreground critical making, rather than verbal or abstract discussions.

For the experts convening the workshops, creative practice engagement that blends analog and digital modalities is at the heart and soul of doing critically engaged and collaborative work with/in communities. So, too, the ability to respond to emergent needs in the moment and in the research, including finding ways to accommodate participant disappointments as well as the "aha" moments when they happen. Workshop facilitators’ practices include having participants build moodboards to critically analyze automated smart city data collection; working with young adults to build online games to better understand the politics of gender and race in their communities; sewing and performing in costumes to explore historical technologies; co-creating interpretive infographics, audio, and video with communities of practice as advocacy strategies for action; prompting participants to write postcards to their future datafied selves.

The workshops are designed to include practical making experiences as well as robust discussion of the value of each method in the research of the presenters. We will share how these methods connect to particular epistemologies and across disciplinary trajectories, as well as tips and tricks for using/facilitating these modalities among one’s own participants. Methods we demo will depend on number of workshops available (likely includes: collaborative infographics or exploratory audio and video making (M.E. Luka, UToronto), stitching and performing (Kat Jungnickel, Goldsmiths), game play with participants (Larissa Hjorth, RMIT), game making as critical race pedagogy (Kishonna Gray, U Kentucky), and critical counter-mapping with smart city data (Annette Markham, Utrecht Uni).

Each workshop will introduce the general idea of participatory creative practice followed by two short hands-on demos (participatory exercises), highlighting two different modalities. These are tightly planned to work with limited timing. Facilitators have significant experience conducting these types of workshops.

Chang, E. Y., Gray, K. L., Bird, A. (2021). Playing difference: Toward a games of colour pedagogy. In Critical Pedagogy, Race, and Media. Routledge.

Hjorth, L. (2017). Care, Media & Ritual: Creative, design, social, and ethnographic

Interventions. Report. https://www.larissahjorth.net/s/Care-media-and-ritual_Summary_July2017.pdf

Jungnickel, K. (2020) (Ed.). Transmissions: Critical Tactics for Making and Communicating Research. MIT Press.

Luka, M.E. (2019). Walking matters: A peripatetic rethinking of energy culture. In Energy Culture. West Virginia University Press.

Markham, A., Harris, A. Luka, ME. (2020). Massive and Microscopic Sensemaking. Qualitative Inquiry.

Bluesky BPLLC is a public benefit corporation that is currently developing a new protocol for creating federated social media, the AT Protocol. Proponents of federation cite decentralization as a key benefit, asserting that it combats many of the dangers created by centralized corporate-owned platforms. Bluesky aims to utilize the decentralization federation to “turn social media into a shared public commons” that supports democratic society (Bluesky Team 2023). However, as Alexander Galloway demonstrates, decentralization is not the removal, but simply the relocation, of control. Control continues to reside in the protocol on which the network is built (Galloway 2004). Part of a larger project examining federated social networks, this paper argues that the AT Protocol mirrors key logics of whiteness, particularly the bifurcated relationship between the universal and the individual. Thus, the AT Protocol – both technically and discursively – perpetuates whiteness as a primary locus of control in the resultant networks.

This study examines the connection between the Black Panther Party’s (BPP) 1960s activism and current discussions on technological misuse. It highlights the BPP’s foresight in its struggle against oppressive colonial technologies, a concept echoed in modern theories like surveillance capitalism (Zubhoff, 2019) and data colonialism (Couldy and Mejias, 2019). The paper uses historical analysis and archival research to explore the BPP’s collaboration with the April Third Movement (A3M) against Stanford University's Vietnam War-related projects, foreshadowing today's debates on digital surveillance and exploitation.

The BPP amended its Ten Point Program in 1972, showcasing a shift towards revolutionary intercommunalism, which underlines global decolonial solidarity and critiques capitalist exploitation across oppressed communities. This revision also explicitly called for "people's community control of modern technology," presaging current concerns over technology’s role in societal control.

The paper argues that the BPP’s early warnings against Stanford University's involvement in defense-funded projects like ARPAnet—the precursor to the internet—were prophetic. The BPP recognized the potential of technology to act as a colonial tool, a stance initially dismissed but now seen as insightful given Silicon Valley’s emergence from these protested sites.

By placing the BPP’s technological critiques within anti-colonial contexts, the paper advocates for recognizing historical activism’s role in shaping today's digital rights discourse. It urges a reevaluation of technology's societal role and supports a future where technology benefits all communities instead of perpetuating exploitation and control

This project examines the life and death of Facebook’s “ethnic affinity” targeted advertising category. The category was the subject of several lawsuits that alleged it violated the Fair Housing Act, by allowing advertisers to exclude protected classes from the audience of an advertisement. It argues that the category serves to negotiate tensions between the supposedly “post-racial” aesthetic of web platforms, and the political economy of targeted advertising online. Using media genealogy as a method, it traces the introduction, transformation and eventual removal of “ethnic affinity” from Facebook’s interface. It reads across several archives that span a variety of stakeholders in the production and circulation of “ethnic affinity” in order to reconstruct how the category is understood, both as a technical object and as a discursive formation. It argues that technical discourse obscures the persistence of racial discrimination in algorithmic targeting by highlighting disparities between Facebook’s instructions to developers, its public-facing statements, and how advertisers understood its technical changes. “Ethnic affinity” is then best understood as a racial technology, one that constructs and enforces the boundaries of race. I argue that this has historical antecedents in the deployment of colorblindness as justification for racial disparity. This project contributes to studies on the relationship between technologies of racialization and platform capitalism.

Due to hardened border practices in EU, migrants and asylum seekers seeking refuge in Europe have to rely on various smuggling services shared on social media platforms and entrepreneurs who advertise services online. Our paper explores the emergence of this dark industry of mobility that operates on social media platforms. Based on interviews with migrants and refugees in Finland, the paper maps digital sites of smuggling and explore the ways in which the migrants, in their highly precarious situation, engaged with smuggling and dealt with the challenges they faced. The aim is to gain a more nuanced understanding of the complications of digital markets around mobility for the people concerned, and most importantly offer insight into the ways in which platform economy shapes migrant mobility and safety of migrants. Moreover we discuss how both platformization and European migration policies are intrinsically connected with the emergence of these markets.

First emerging around 2015, tradwives represent a nostalgic yearning for a mythic past and white supremacist utopia. Yet, in recent years, tradwife creators have received increased mainstream attention and notoriety for their display of “traditional” gender roles, 1950s aesthetics, and open anti-feminism. This online prominence has led some of them, paradoxically, to emerge as the breadwinner in their family–a development that seems at odds with their professed belief that women should eschew careers in favor of childrearing and homemaking. In this in-progress, mixed-methods project, we aim to understand the tensions between the traditional gender roles tradwives advocate for and the entrepreneurial nature of their online promotion and monetization of said lifestyle. We conducted a computational text analysis of 25 English-language creators’ websites, as well as a qualitative analysis of the creators’ Instagram Story highlights. Our emerging findings show that tradwives’ solution to the tension between their professed ideology and their entrepreneurial activities lies in the obfuscation thereof: Neither housework nor creator labor are discussed as work. Explicit political discussions remain similarly unspoken, except for occasional expressions of opposition to feminism and reproductive rights. Religion, however, features prominently. The obfuscation of labor and absence of explicit politics represents a strategic move towards palatability that allows the current iteration of the tradwife to find greater mainstream appeal than earlier tradwives. Our results suggest that the tradwife is a particular influencer style or vernacular around a coherent ideological theme, thus emerging as a metapolitical branding strategy.

Danmei 耽美 culture, which features male-male romance and/or erotica, emerged in mainland China in the late 1990s and has been flourishing since the 2010s across East and Southeast Asia. The dynamic Chinese danmei culture has received significant attention in academia in recent years, either by mapping out the resistant potential against the heteronormativity or by highlighting the escapist route for expressing the women participants’ desires. The danmei culture has evolved into a transmedia landscape, and at the same time, an ever-expanding cultural industry being exploited by the logic of capital. Danmei writers as affective labors living in such a cultural industry have been rarely considered in present danmei studies.

Through exploring the datafication of qing (情, affects and desires) via in-depth interviews with contracted danmei writers on Jinjiang, I examine the distinct feature of danmei writers as ambivalent affective labor. For danmei writers, the datafication and monetization of qing leads to increasingly formulaic writing. By selecting, appropriating and combing the elements in the database of qing, danmei writers are able to swiftly generate a male homoerotic love story that efficiently and effectively invoke the affects and desires of readers for better monetization. Pleasures and pains are both involved in doing the ambivalent affective labor, which further consolidates the precariousness of the affective labour. However, the affects and desires per se cannot be fully manipulated – transformative momentum is embedded in the water-like qing all the time.

On April 6, 2018, visitors to the classified advertising website Backpage were informed that U.S. law enforcement had seized backpage.com and its affiliated websites. Five days later, Donald Trump signed the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) (Romano, 2018). For sex workers, this marked the tragic end of an era of increased safety, where social media was used to mitigate potential risks of in-person sex work.

This co-authored autoethnographic study builds upon Are's (2021) research on Meta's "shadowbanning" practices on Instagram. According to Cottom (2020), social media platforms are sociopolitical systems that have "amplified and reworked existing social relations" (p.442). We explore how the sociopolitical aspects of social media platforms and digital sex work amplify and rework the sexist and racist hegemonic strategies employed by social media companies (Kelly, 1994).

In this study, we detail the experiences of Clark, an Afro-Latine sex worker, and the labor practices and tactics used to overcome digital erasure in a visual media economy that devalues all forms of sex work (Berg, 2022). Through narrative and thick description, we show that Black sex workers' digital practices are reshaping a sex work labor on a post backpage.com internet. Black femme digital social networks and tactics can strengthen the impact of Black femme activists' online labor and other digital practices. Sex work is labor, and we advocate for its decriminalization, urging equal protections and privileges for sex workers comparable to those in other industries in the United States.

Beauty is one of the most popular and lucrative segments on YouTube, with broad transnational appeal, making it an ideal site to investigate the relationship between commercialization, globalization, and digital platforms. We focus on makeup reviews to utilize established research on cross-cultural differences in reviewing and ask how cultural repertoires of evaluation compare across multiple languages. We collected popular makeup reviews using keyword searches in five languages—English, German, Italian, Japanese, and Korean—associated with diverse cultural contexts. The top 20 videos in each language (n=100) were selected for analysis, producing a group of successful channels. We employed content analysis to compare the videos’ evaluative criteria, using a codebook of ten values. We found that creators across languages employ a shared cultural repertoire to evaluate beauty products, concerned with aesthetics, functionality, pleasure, and, to a lesser extent, distinctiveness and economy. While beauty creators appeal to a consistent set of values, they rarely elaborate on their meaning, focus on positivity, and emphasize the subjectivity of their evaluations. We argue that the approach to evaluation in YouTube makeup reviews challenges previously observed dichotomies between Eastern and Western countries, blending elements of both collectivist and individualist communication styles. Most creators make indirect recommendations even as they use reviews to build a distinctive personal brand. Although further research is necessary to investigate the reach of this practice, our analysis of multi-lingual makeup reviews demonstrates how the homogenization of social media entertainment need not be synonymous with Westernization.

Studies on digital platforms and online incivility have established that uses of humor can lean towards cyberbullying and hate speech. Focusing on TikTok’s affordances and cultures of online incivility, this paper studies how TikTok influencers and their audiences maneuver legal-but-harmful humour (Matamoros-Fernández et al., 2023). Specifically, we study how online incivility has become an accepted and negotiated practice in the Filipino context through the phenomenon of ‘dogshows’, where users throw jabs at individuals using derogatory humor and provocative memes. Through online observation and textual analysis of TikTok posts and their corresponding comment sections, we demonstrate how online incivility is subtly amplified through humour and play, and how Gen Z and young children became both objects and producers of these dogshows. We argue that while there is already peer surveillance on TikTok, there needs to be more deliberation between TikTok and at-risk groups to make the platform a more civil space.

Brazil's favelas, home to approximately 17.1 million residents, historically face stigmatization rooted in narratives of violence and poverty. Responding to this, the emergence of the "peripheral self" in the 1990s reflects a prideful identity challenging stereotypes. This paper explores the case of Nátaly Dias, "Blogueira de Baixa Renda" or "Blô," a digital influencer from Rio de Janeiro's Morro do Banco favela. Blô's Instagram and YouTube content, initiated in 2018, diverge from the prevalent ostentatious influencer market, presenting a unique "favela aesthetic."

Grounded in non-participant observation, this research proposes the theoretical notion of a "favela aesthetic" based on 442 analyzed Instagram posts. Blô’s portrayal deliberately deviates from conventional Instagram norms, challenging the pursuit of flawless imagery. She represents an authentic voice from the favela, using social media without glamorizing poverty or perpetuating stereotypes. This challenges the prevailing discourse linking influencers solely with wealth.

Blô's narrative contributes to the concept of "consumption as aspiration," offering a unique perspective on digital influencers in the Global South. Her content celebrates local success stories, promoting cultural and social endogenous aspirational consumption. Blô's self-representation refrains from distancing herself from the favela, challenging the popular notion that leaving signifies success. The analysis suggests that Blô's profile serves as a counter-narrative, destabilizing ingrained representations of Brazilian favelas and promoting a more inclusive and accurate portrayal. It highlights the potential for diverse aesthetics within the digital influencer culture, emphasizing the complexities, struggles, creativity, and vitality inherent in Brazilian favelas.

In recent years, a specific type of influencers has notoriously popularised – misogynist influencers, with Andrew Tate standing out as the most prominent one. While popular and networked misogyny (Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016) and various parts of the manosphere, together with related conceptualisations have been well studied, Andrew Tate and other misogynists as (aspirational) influencers have received little academic attention. This study will focus on these aspirational misogynist content creators, exploring the circulation of their misogynist content on social media, the professionalisation and monetisation of misogyny, and lastly, how these communities keep registering ‘under the radar’ (Abidin, 2021).

Using a mixed-method approach, this study will focus on misogynist influencers in Estonia. Digital ethnography (Pink et al., 2016; Markham, 2017) will be the dominant method employed, exploring the strategic circulation, professionalisation (Greenwood, 1966; Trice, 1993) and monetisation aspects of misogynist content on various social platforms. Secondly, a combination of qualitative content analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) and socio-semiotic visual analysis (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2020) is used to study the textual and visual methods of social steganography (boyd & Marwick, 2011). Very preliminary results show that in the process of professionalisation, ideologies of masculinities are created, each of which emphasises different aspects (e.g., financial, physical, sexual, etc). The results of this study are crucial for understanding the circulation and professionalisation of misogynistic content in the context of networked misogyny (Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016) – an important phenomenon related to the influencer industry.

This study examines the augmented reality (AR) app Breonna’s Garden created in honor of Breonna Taylor. On March 13, 2020, Taylor, a twenty-six-year-old Black woman, was fatally murdered in her home in Louisville, Kentucky when multiple plainclothes officers executed a no-knock warrant as part of an investigation for narcotics. Created one year later, Breonna’s Garden emerged as an AR experience accessible through mobile devices developed by Lady Pheønix and Big Rock Creative in collaboration with Taylor’s family. Breonna’s Garden functions as a sanctuary that cultivates a sacred space for healing and for society to process their emotions of grief. This digital garden serves as a case study for understanding how Black feminist praxis is intertwined with AR technologies as a form of what Badia Ahad-Legardy calls "regenerative nostalgia," offering users a space for healing, activism, and reflexivity.

The body positive and fat activist community is an extensive online network crossing many social media platforms, particularly active on Instagram and TikTok. Social media platforms provide “offer opportunities to support, community and practical solutions to issues” (Kyrölä, 2021, p. 113), and a space for resistance (e.g. Puhakka, 2023) for the body positive and fat acceptance movements.

Even though there is not a commonly agreed set of rules for body positivity or fat activism, the idea of intentional weight loss has largely been rejected by the fat community in favor of encouraging health promoting behaviors without the need for weight loss. However, the previously unified activist front has started to crack as prominent figures within the fat community have taken a sharp turn from #bodypositive content to documenting their #weightlossjourney.

Drawing from heory on master narrative, counter narratives and narrative resistance (Bamberg, 2004; Bamberg & Wipff, 2020; Hochman & Spector‐Mersel, 2020; McLean & Syed, 2015; Meretoja, 2020; Ronai & Cross, 1998), as well as fat studies, I explore online social media weight loss narratives of members of the fat community, as well as the responses from the fat community. More specifically, using digital ethnographic methods, I examine how the weight loss narratives on Instagram and TikTok negotiate between hegemonic narratives and narratives emerging from the fat community.

The analysis of #weightlossjourney narratives shows how online activist communities can be splintered when versions of the master narrative the communities have collectively resisted become adapted by members of the community.

There is long-standing research on women’s use of media for romantic/erotic fantasy, including novelettes (Radway, 1984), porn (Juffer, 1998) and erotica apps Bellas & McAllister, 2023). This presentation explores the similarities and differences between earlier forms of media romancing and the use of an AI companion. Emerging research on AI chatbots uses frameworks that assign novelty to human-machine communications. In this study, we focus on the user experience – we conducted qualitative, in-depth interviews with twenty mostly midlife female users of the Replika chatbot, whom we recruited online. Thematic analysis identified that the women used the bot, first, for fantasies of a companion they were lacking in real life, such as an attentive lover, friend or child, in the context of feeling alone (due to e.g. living alone, caring for family, inattentive husband or having a chronic condition). Second, the bot was reflexively used for caring for or managing the self, such as validating one’s worth and emotions to neutralize negative thinking, following the therapeutic ethos (Illouz, 2008, Gravel-Patry, 2023). The fantasies of an attentive partner were similar to previous work on romancing, although the women’s life situations were more diverse than often investigated. The use of the bot for regulating emotions, however, was new and signifies the spirit of our time emphasizing self-management and positive thinking. The study contextualizes human-machine communication by discussing the individual experiences of female Replika users to understand better both change and continuity in our communication with media, from romance novels to AI chatbots.

In 2017, a new trend emerged on social media called “Instagram vs. Reality.” To participate, Instagram users were encouraged to post side-by-side photos of themselves, one side being an idealized 'Instagram' depiction and the other a more ‘realistic’ one. Using a qualitative content and thematic analysis, we asked: How does a trend like Instagram vs. Reality fit within a context of popular feminism and confidence culture? Mindful of the ways that popular feminist campaigns privilege dominant feminine representations, we also asked who is contributing to the trend, and what messages these contributors are spreading? The results indicated two things. First, we argue that the trend is a neoliberal project emphasizing individual psychological change via developing media literacy, rather than efforts aimed at social transformation. Second, we discovered that the trend fits within popular feminist media representations because it privileges and makes visible young, slim, conventionally attractive white women, at the expense of more diverse body types, ages, and non-normative beauty standards. We conclude by taking a stand against arguments situating media literacy as the best solution to combating social ills, arguing instead that media literacy is a neoliberal harm reduction strategy that best fits within the ideology of confidence culture.

This panel offers a reflection on the evolution and transformations of apps and app studies over the past decade, emphasizing how apps have seamlessly integrated into our daily routines and shaped our cultural and economic landscape. This process, known as ‘appification’, involves integrating various aspects of daily life and activities into mobile applications, fundamentally altering how we communicate, access information, make payments, and use digital services (Dieter et al., 2019; Goggin, 2021; Morris and Murray, 2018). Research in app studies has evolved in multiple directions during this time to analyse the implications of appification. This has included examining how app interfaces and features influence social, cultural, and economic practices, employing methods such as the walkthrough method or feature analysis (Hasinoff & Bivens, 2021; Light et al., 2018). Additionally, there has been a focus on the technical and material dimensions of the data infrastructures in which apps are situated (Gerlitz et al., 2019). Simultaneously, the emergence of new app genres, like ‘super apps’, which combine features, services, and practices in unique ways, has transformed apps into platforms for further development. However, this evolution also raises methodological questions on researching and contextualizing change over time (Helmond & van der Vlist, 2021). The evolving and dynamic nature of apps, accordingly, necessitates a continuous need for critical reflection on the methods used to study apps and the phenomenon of appification.

The panel explores the concept of appification through various lenses, including governance and safety measures in dating apps, the complexities of app-based authentication, the global rise of super-apps and their historical evolution in the Chinese context, and the integration of AI technologies into mobile and enterprise applications. Methodologically, the panel showcases diverse strategies to explore appification, such as the walkthrough method, creating research personas, decompiling and debugging app software packages, historical analysis using app repositories, and analysing mini-apps and app store inventories. Together, these studies provide insight into emerging approaches for understanding appification going forward and how apps are reshaping interactions, governance, and technology integration across different domains and cultural contexts.

All five papers in this panel engage with the concept of appification, which entails the integration of various aspects of daily life into mobile applications, fundamentally changing how we communicate, access information, conduct transactions, and use digital services. The first paper employs the walkthrough method to explore how dating apps shape the notion of ‘safety’ through their policies and technological features, shedding light on how safety measures are often traded for data and how these apps normalise surveillance practices. The second paper investigates the appification of dating by examining Tinder’s authentication mechanisms, revealing the complexities of user interactions and data exchanges within the app ecosystem. Advancing the field of app studies, the panel thus explores methodological strategies and conceptual frameworks to address the nuances of appification. The third paper maps out the global landscape of ‘super apps’ and theorises the process of ‘super-appification’, where apps extend beyond their traditional boundaries to offer a wide range of features and services, reshaping user engagement and corporate expansion. A comparative historiography of prominent Chinese super apps forms the basis of the fourth paper, tracing their evolution, features, and strategies driving their dominance. Lastly, the fifth paper examines the emerging ecosystems of AI apps, exploring their infrastructural features and relationships. Together, these studies provide a comprehensive overview of the ongoing transformations in the mobile ecosystem and the appification process, highlighting the crucial role of app features in shaping social interactions and corporate strategies.

Political trends around the world have drawn further scholarly attention to the study of polarisation, especially also as it is expressed and potentially deepened by public communication on digital and social media platforms. The very concept of polarisation itself, however, remains ill-defined especially in communication research, where it is often used as a mere buzzword without sufficient definition – even in spite of a wide range of conceptual approaches that variously emphasise issue-centric, ideological, affective, interpretive, interactional, or other facets of polarisation (Marino & Ianelli, 2023; Esau et al., 2023).

Issue-centric approaches to the study of polarisation often connect it with specific controversies, and therefore align well with controversy mapping and related methodological frameworks. Especially where they study such controversies in digital and social media contexts, they also point to the significant intersections between the circulation of problematic information by and the deepening of polarisation between partisan actors, as well as to the often asymmetrical nature of such contestations (where groups on one side of a given controversy are substantially more likely to use problematic information to support their cause than the groups opposing them; Kreiss & McGregor, 2023).

Unfortunately, much of the recent research in this field has continued to focus on a small number of key political contexts, with emphasis especially on the US and UK. This panel reviews evidence on the intersection of controversies, problematic information, and polarisation through a series of case studies from six continents: North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Oceania. In combination, these studies present a substantially more comprehensive picture of global similarities and local differences.

Paper 1 explores the polarising impact of disinformation campaigns in favour of incumbent president Jair Bolsonaro in the 2022 Brasilian presidential election. It reveals a potentially unusual bottom-up disinformation pattern that produces a reverse influence flow from grassroots activists to political leaders and complicates standard distinctions between mis- and disinformation; this also creates new challenges for fact-checking efforts.

Paper 2 examines the dynamics of Italian public opinion in response to the introduction of COVID-19 restrictions in early 2020. Drawing on longitudinal survey data, it identifies a range of perspectives from extreme communitarian to extreme libertarian, and connects this to patterns of legacy and social media use, attitudes towards political institutions, and levels of exposure to mis- and disinformation.

Paper 3 compares the divergent dynamics of political debates on Indigenous rights in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. In the campaigning leading up to Australia’s 2023 referendum on greater Indigenous recognition and representation, it identifies a highly asymmetrical contest that flipped public opinion from strong support for Indigenous recognition to a 60% No vote within less than one year. In the heated political debate about Māori rights in Aotearoa New Zealand since the 2023 election of a new, conservative coalition government, it identifies continuing Māori/non-Māori solidarity in resistance to the reduction of rights stemming from the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi.

Paper 4 investigates the debates on Twitter about measures to combat sexual violence in Indonesia that came into effect in 2021 and 2022. Drawing on extensive content and network analysis, the study shows that, diverging from the #metoo-style activism against sexual discrimination, harassment, and violence that is common in Western contexts, in Indonesia this agenda is interpreted predominantly through the lens of an underlying polarisation between secular nationalist and Islamist political groupings in the world’s largest Muslim-majority democracy.

Paper 5 compares the online dynamics of the abortion debate in the US before and after the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision, focussing especially on political candidates’ social media messaging on abortion rights. Analysis of Democrats’ and Republicans’ posts about the issue, and of broader Twitter and Facebook user engagement with the issue, is expected to point to substantial differences between the parties, timeframes, and platforms.

In combination, these five papers cover a rich selection of case studies on the intersections between controversies, problematic information, and polarisation around the world. Extended abstracts for all five papers are included in the submission.

Platformisation of cultural production has given rise to a new era in media globalisation thanks to the platforms’ socio-technical affordances which enable global circulation and reception of media content. While there are certainly some unifying practices shared by creators globally, social media entertainment, nevertheless, is far from creating a global monolithic creator culture. This is because platformed creator labour is situated in diverse regional, national, and local media production, distribution, and consumption contexts as much as in the global platform architectures. By shifting the analysis of creator cultures from the Global North to the Global South, this roundtable discussion will make a significant intervention into how we make sense of the complex relationship between Global South nation-states, social media platforms, and creator cultures. The roundtable participants will situate creator labour within the complexities of digital production cultures, in conversations with local political, economic, social, cultural and linguistic contexts. Our findings suggest that the creator cultures in the Global South exhibit a more dynamic landscape than the Global North due to a concatenation of diverse governance and regulatory systems, as well as cultural heterogeneity, lopsided infrastructure penetration, and informal industry structures. Rather than placing creator cultures in the Global South against the Global North to produce a series of binaries, this roundtable discussion will put Global South creator cultures in a dialogue by shedding light on distinctive local factors shaping digital production cultures. Providing rich empirical insights from Global South countries such as India, Turkey, Chile, Hong Kong, Nigeria, and Kenya, the participants will engage in a productive discussion without erasing the richness and complexities of each local context to fit into the existing conceptual framework developed in Western contexts and thereby contribute to theory building exercises about creator cultures.

The paper presents findings about the labor conditions on the work behind AI development, with two main goals. First, the aim is to investigate the current labor conditions in the AI industry and point out the lack of quality of outsourced jobs offered by digital labor platforms and Business Process Outsourcing companies, calling attention to the challenges faced by workers and the human costs of AI systems development. Second, it presents a global research project results on how not only to carry on international studies on the topic but also how to use an action-research approach to generate impact through public scoring companies and encourage the adoption of best practices by them.

The paper’s methods are based on the project’s action-research approach and methodological framework. The project scores companhies based on principles that address the major issues that define labour relations, namely, pay, conditions, contracts, management, and representation.

The paper presents the result of the assessment of cloudwork platforms conducted in 2023. In addition, it paper will examine labour relations in BPO companies in the AI supply chain using a case study of the company Sama, which is based in the United States and operates in many African countries.

Among the findings are problems such as non-payment situations, lack of policies to ensure minimum wage, significant rates of unpaid labour, poor measures to promote health and safety, problems in management practices and weak collective bargaining practices.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has woven into a supply chain of capital, resources and human labour that has been neglected in debates about the social impact of this technology. While the literature on critical AI studies have focused on algorithmic bias and opacity, the global production line that fosters AI innovation have drawn little attention. Building on Tsing’s concept of supply chain capitalism, this paper offers a journey through mines, semiconductor manufacturers, data centres, technological firms, data labelling factories and e-waste dumps by illustrating the complex, diverse, opaque and global structure of the supply chain of AI. Then, the paper moves into illuminating a case study drawn from three months of fieldwork on data centres in Mexico, revealing that algorithmic harms go beyond code pitfalls. A close examination into the supply chain capitalism of AI reveals that other types of eco-political frictions are arising, particularly in the context of fundamental and environmental rights. This demands a broader and critical perspective on AI studies by considering the entire capitalist production line of its industry—from mineral extractivism to e-waste dumps—and its environmental and political consequences.

Despite the rise in commercial applications of LLMs, scholarship has neglected an in-depth appreciation of the free contribution of subjects communicative social action as the engine of training data production as a necessary moment in digital processes of valorisation. This issue was popular in the analyses of the post-operaist tradition of free labour, but have since been missing in examinations of more recent technological developments, specifically in what concerns AI. Although the work of Baudrillard is semi-frequently evoked in descriptive critical assessments of new technologies, there is little integration of Baudrillard's work in contemporary studies of AI. This paper aims at contributing in this direction, by showcasing the utility of Baudrillard’s concepts of simulation, subject function, masses, and the social, for an understanding of immaterial free labour in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs).

Drawing from the recent phenomena of the sale of Reddit communications content to OpenAI as training data, I propose the notion of digital common as the pre-trained collected and recorded data of actual human communication through digital systems. I propose the framework of the subject function as expounded by Baudrillard, in both its individual and collective aspects, as a necessary conjuncture to understand how commercial applications of conversational LLMs fit into the broader landscape of digital political economy. I suggest that the role played in this specific application derives from the appropriation of freely generated user-data as constituting the digital common and as carrying a specific conception of subjectivity as functional.

In a field outside Lund in southern Sweden, the world’s most powerful neutron source is nearly ready for action. This neutron source is located at the heart of the European Spallation Source (ESS), a Big Science facility that – when fully operational – will produce some of the largest quantities of digital data in today’s data-dominated world.

Starting in 2027, scientists from all over the world will travel to this experimental facility to test samples, hoping for cutting-edge discoveries. Reliable capture and management of experimental data is essential to ensure that scientific results have a solid foundation. However, the visibility of those working with data management and the institutional support for such activities at such facilities has historically been low.

This paper tells the story of a unique research journey following the people responsible for designing and implementing digital infrastructures for experimental data at the ESS as the demand for professional technical support grows in the scientific user community. Drawing on indepth interviews conducted over three years, I explore what the emergence of this new professional class means for validation of these experts’ skills and for the production of “raw” data in Big Science.

Decisions to restrict data access to major platforms like Twitter and Reddit have recently led to scholarly discussions of a “post-API” world, in which researchers can no longer depend on company-sanctioned access to powerful platforms (Bruns, 2019; Freelon, 2018; Tromble, 2021). Yet TikTok appeared to counter the trend with the release of a Research API in 2023. The API was designed to aid researchers studying TikTok, reducing the need to rely on external open-source tools (e.g. PykTok), where the scope of data may be limited.

Scholars granted access to the API can search for videos and users, and retrieve metadata on viewership, engagement with, and circulation of videos. TikTok allows researchers to retrieve up to 100,000 records per day. Such data could help provide insight into patterns of communication on one of the world’s fastest growing social media platforms, and one that is increasingly used by young people for social interaction, information seeking, and political speech (Cervi et al., 2023; Schellewald, 2021; Song et al., 2021).

Following the tradition of previous digital data quality audits (Pfeffer et al., 2023; Tromble et al., 2017), we perform an audit of the TikTok Research API, with an interest in helping researchers evaluate the utility and quality of the API. We conclude that research based on this data source may lack scientific validity, particularly if it relies on video metadata (likes, shares, views, comments). However, we also discuss potential uses of the Research API for archival searches.

In this paper, we explore how AI researchers, situated within university-based research networks, mobilise and resist industry interests. The research question to which this paper is addressed is: how do university-based academics in the field of AI experience and mediate industry influence in their research? We answer this question through semi-structured interviews with research-focused academics (n = 90) affiliated with university-based AI research networks. We find that national research funders and university leadership incentivise and facilitate industry investments in AI research. We demonstrate how AI researchers mobilise this interest to pursue their own research goals, whilst also—at times—subordinating their research goals to the interests of industry. We highlight how AI researchers internalise the commercial logics of technology firms, which become mirrored in researchers' orientation towards generalisable and scalable research outputs that can move between many application domains and local contexts. We argue that university-based AI research networks primarily operate as mediators between industry, government, and university actors, and highlight the role national research investment strategies play in creating an enabling environment for industry influence of AI research.

This paper charts the emergence of a distinct category of research-dedicated GenAI platforms, which we term Research GenAI or RGAI. These platforms are explicitly marketed to a cross-disciplinary academic audience, promising to automate research discovery and writing tasks, such as identifying/summarising published research, writing literature reviews, conducting data analysis, and synthesising findings. RGAI platforms (e.g., Consensus, Elicit, Research Rabbit, Scholarcy, Scite, SciSpace) are rapidly being adopted, in a context of experimentation, uncertainty, and controversy.

We define the contours of Research GenAI by mapping the history and development of RGAI platforms and developing a preliminary typology of RGAI. We situate RGAI platforms within the scholarly economy and ongoing processes of platformisation and automation of academic work. We make a case for the need to understand RGAI platforms as complex sociotechnical systems that intersect with social, ethical, institutional, and legal questions, and demonstrate this approach through an STS-informed walkthrough of two notable RGAI platforms: Consensus and Elicit. In this presentation we present our findings generated from these walkthroughs and explore the implications of the technologies for the academic publishing industry.

Companies that collect personal data have spent billions of dollars complying with a patchwork of global data privacy laws since 2018. In response, a nascent privacy tech industry has emerged, consisting of tech startups, consultants, investors, platforms, and domain experts that collectively help companies build compliant data governance programs. This study recognizes the key role of translating the law into software products by asking: how is expertise defined and encoded in the privacy tech industry? I draw on fieldwork from a broader ethnographic study of the privacy tech industry to identify three findings. First, the privacy tech industry constitutes a networked arena of relations structured by partitioning professional expertise across technical, legal, and operational domains. Second, technical expertise in the privacy tech industry is often tenuous and contingent, which could be strengthened by applying scrutiny and deliberation to evaluate the content of expertise rather than its performance. Third, boundaries of expertise are increasingly encoded in compliance software, perpetuating performative rather than scrutinized expertise. At scale, these products promote managerial processes that manifest as checkbox compliance, codifying splintered accountability and undermining the spirit of data privacy law. I argue that technology policy would benefit from scrutinizing the contents of expertise, inviting agonistic deliberation, and including lay expertise to counter the technocratic structural relations of a surveillance economy.

The Education Technology sector, EdTech, has been a steadily growing presence in education, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic and the ‘digital turn’ that many schools were forced to undergo. Uniting these papers is the contention that, while the use of technology for student governance is not new to education (Cuban,1990; Selwyn, 2016), the material reality has evolved rapidly: the use of digital technologies specifically has furthered the possibilities for student quantification, datafication, and the encoding of pedagogical relationships (Perrotta et al., 2021).

This panel pursues three lines of argument. First, we suggest that EdTech is not just about learning: it increasingly implicates itself in administration, pastoral care, and public discourse. Second, we uncover the expanding network of actors involved in the production, procurement, and implementation of EdTech, including developers, a new category of EdTech brokers, and also more ‘traditional’ actors: administrators, staff, educators, and students. We show the enactment of EdTech depends on this range of actors that are the focus of our research, thus opening up the black box of EdTech, using varied methodological approaches grounded in empirical data. Third, we recognize that while EdTech is no monolith, EdTech is reconfiguring educational realities beyond the scope of apps in classrooms. In showing this, we retain a critical perspective without defaulting to cynical techno-nihilism. Crucially, we all engage in empirical research to document the changing landscape of this increasingly prominent industry in the sphere of education.

The first paper scrutinizes the technical underpinnings of ROYBI, an EdTech product that utilizes Amazon Rekognition to personalize content for young children based on their emotions (Amazon, 2020). Using the Ground Truth Tracing method (Kang, 2023), the paper finds that such EdTech hinges on the use of eight ‘valid’ emotions, and is rife with subjective choices and dissonances that determine what these technologies do, ultimately showing that leveraging ML within EdTech can lead to narrow conceptions of learning and learners based on constraints of ML infrastructures and processes.

The second paper explores how EdTech impacts the social hierarchies between school staff, with EdTech privileging roles which are more performative (Perrotta & Williamson, 2018), i.e. administrative staff benefitting at the expense of teaching staff. This is enabled by an acceptance of performativity measures by school staff, despite recognizing these measures as flawed. As a result, the EdTech industry generates a data episteme (Koopman, 2019) within schools, enshrining the persistent need for more data and, in turn, more EdTech.

The third paper explores how knowledge and evidence around EdTech are built and circulated by emerging intermediary organizations referred to here as “edTech brokers” (Ortegón, Decuypere & Williamson, forthcoming). Drawing on interviews with relevant stakeholders (including CEOs, program managers, researchers, consultants) as well as publicly available documentary sources produced by brokers, this contribution explores the political, financial, and educational factors that come into play when brokers manufacture EdTech ‘evidence’ of ‘what works’, as well as the concrete implications that this knowledge has in both schools and markets.

The fourth paper looks at the experience of university staff whose work is becoming increasingly intertwined with and dependent on a particular EdTech platform, despite a growing mismatch between the logics of the platform and how the staff members understand and conceptualize their own work. This paper draws on participant observation, ethnographic interviews, and discourse analysis to try to understand how technologies become embedded and put to use despite the critique these technologies inspire in users.

The final paper focuses on surveillance software used in schools increasingly since the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper employs multi-sited ethnography, which begins at a global EdTech conference and ends in a US secondary school, ultimately arriving at seven variants of the software. These variants foreground how the software acts to harden certain classroom practices while also offering specific ways of framing and responding to young people in crisis. This author ultimately raises questions about how EdTech shapes educational futures.

Together, these papers critically interrogate EdTech’s role in how information is generated and understood about students, thus exploring how the EdTech industry shapes what is considered legitimate ‘knowledge’ and desirable ‘behaviour’ in education. This is achieved through empirically assessing the impact that this external influence has on both students and school staff, making the case for avenues that staff and students might reassert their agency, even as they resist or reimagine the EdTech within their institutions. Thus, this panel resists technological determinism, instead imagining how these products could better reflect the needs of its users. At a time of continued promotion of AI tools for teaching (Warren-Lee & Grant, 2023), persistent EdTech data leaks (Human Rights Watch, 2022; Carey, 2022) and EdTech-driven discrimination (Gallegos, 2023), it is vital that the EdTech industry be subject to this critical scrutiny, that asks when, how, and whether this technology should be used in educational institutions.

This paper will examine recent developments in the youth-oriented gaming industry to understand emerging structures of value and circulation. Platforms such as Fortnite and Roblox have sought to characterise activity on their services as ‘experiences’ rather than games - positioning themselves as mediators of a wide range of activity beyond gaming and play. At the same time, they use the language and affect of play to shape young people's creativity. Strong critique has been levelled at this tendency to turn children and youth into 'gamesworkers'. However, there is a very broad range of phenomena to take into account in addition to the most exploitative aspects highlighted in such critiques.

Drawing on textual analysis of Fortnite's 2023 "Big Bang" event, and focus groups conducted with children from 6-12 years of age across the second half of 2023, this paper will utilise theories of digital labour and play to present a method for how games platforms are building new dispositifs (following Angela McRobbie) that shape young people's creative and playful activity.

Beginning in 1998, the Nancy Drew game series comprises over 30 titles and has spawned a robust online fan community that continues today. These games are one of the most enduring and commercially successful products to arise from the girls’ game movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s – an effort to develop video games for girls and in turn to modify the gender dynamics of game culture more generally (Cassell and Jenkins 1998). Nancy Drew games are often praised as a successful example of the girls’ game movement because they encourage exploration, agency, and mobility for girls (Brathwaite 2018). Yet, the racial or colonial politics of this spatial exploration have not been addressed in discussions of girls’ games or of the online cultures that have formed around these games. When game companies make efforts to get girls into games by creating gendered game spaces, what are the politics of constructing, inhabiting, and navigating these spaces? This paper will consider what types of play spaces are offered for girls to inhabit and navigate in the Nancy Drew games and what type of girlhood Her Interactive sought to make feel “at home” in these spaces, both by studying production documents and online fan discourses. It seeks to contribute to digital game scholarship by discussing the racial and colonial ideologies that can be found in feminized game spaces. Specifically, I will consider the feminized white spatial imaginaries constructed in Nancy Drew games and online spaces.

Though discursive shifts signal increasing enthusiasm for children's digital play when instrumental educational outcomes are evident, limited attention has been paid to its possible wellbeing benefits or the reasons that children engage with it. The time that children invest in digital game play presents an opportunity for the global digital games industry to contribute positively to children’s well-being. Empirical research must first examine the diverse relationships between children’s digital play and their wellbeing.

This paper reports on an international, ecoculturally and ethnographically informed and semi-longitudinal study in collaboration with a children's digital game industry partner and a global child's rights organisation to consider: what drives the digital play choices and practices of a diverse cohort of children?; and how do these findings contribute to understanding the relationship between children’s digital play and their wellbeing? This paper draws on a subset of UK data (20 families) amongst a total 50 case study families who were involved across four countries.

The study provides diverse examples of digital play supporting dimensions of children’s subjective wellbeing. However, children’s digital play choices and practices were influenced by diverse and often intersecting factors, most compellingly, by different deep interests, desires and needs, understood in the present study as ‘digital play drivers’. The findings offer an empirically grounded expansion of past ‘needs’ approaches and foreground the mediating role played by digital play drivers in the relationship between digital games and children’s subjective wellbeing. Implications for the children's digital game industry are discussed.

For its global popularity and market expansion, K-pop idol culture has been integrated into child peer culture on social media, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. This is particularly noticeable in the form of K-pop dance challenges on short-form platforms/functions like Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts, where people replicate choreographic moves from latest K-pop songs and post short-form videos with hashtags. Children casually join the trending challenges for fun and post videos by themselves, their parents, and even third-party companies, including child influencer agencies and K-pop training companies. This paper interrogates how this phenomenon has evolved into children’s new peer culture within the context of the influencer and K-pop culture industries. I discuss how children are positioned and presented in the evolving landscape of culture industries in the Asia Pacific region. I argue that this genre serves as a new version of ‘child pageant programs’ where childhood is performed and presented as a mixture of cuteness, innocence, immature maturity, and prodigious skills for the adult gaze. Pertinent issues surrounding children’s agency and wellbeing are also discussed, such as children’s everyday digital labor and the subsequent normalization of commodified childhood innocence in the industries. Crucially, the virality-centered algorithms of social media platforms underpinned in K-pop dance challenges further normalizes children’s seamless labor of cute, with the myth of instant internet virality, stardom, and K-pop dream. This study is based on a 4-year ethnographic observation of children’s K-pop dance challenges in the Asia Pacific region.

"What is the minimum basket of digital goods, services, and skills households need to live and participate in the digital world?"

This paper presents the overall results of the ‘Minimum Digital Living Standard’ (MDLS) project which addresses this question using a novel household-based assessment of digital needs. The project:

• Drew on the Minimum Income Standard methodology to develop a definition of MDLS through four rounds of deliberative focus groups that established a ‘minimum basket of digital goods, services, and skills’ that households with dependent-age children need to be digitally included.
• A UK-wide national survey (n=1582 households) with statistical and geographic evaluations of MDLS to explore correspondence with other social, economic, cultural, and digital measures.
• Undertook multiple in-depth interviews and group consultations with stakeholders representing a variety of communities at risk of digital exclusion, to explore the relevance of the standard regarding key dimensions of lived experience and intersectionality, such as disability, ethnicity, rurality, and poverty.
• Involved ongoing engagement with government, regional, public and third-sector organisations to explore the use of MDLS as a tool to inform policy development.

Findings: 45% of UK households with children lack either the equipment and/or skills needed to meet the MDLS. That is 3.69M households with children. The key predictors of not meeting the MDLS are household deprivation, social class, household composition (single parent, and/or 2+ children), ethnicity, chronic health or disability, urbanity, unemployment, and receipt of benefits.

This UK nationwide project was funded by the Nuffield Foundation, Nominet and the Welsh Government.

The paper employs Worrell’s concept of “digital brokering” (Worrell, 2021) to argue, firstly, that diasporic youth play a key role in sustaining and maintaining transnational family connections, using their digital literacy skills to negotiate literacy barriers of older family members, and that WhatsApp is a key site for these negotiations. Secondly, the paper will offer insights into how these brokering activities were extended beyond the family to transnational community contexts, where examples of WhatsApp digital brokering ranged from: building and participating in transnational networks and movements, addressing COVID-19 misinformation and educating community about COVID-19 safety in cross-border digital campaigns. Finally, we argue that these digital brokering practices constitute novel practices of digital citizenship.

This study explores the intricate convergence of Afrophobia and its projection through (Cyber)Bullying for youth of African descent in Greece. It comprehensively documents the colonialistic nature of the internet and Western scholarship in perpetuating racial (cyber)bullying. Furthermore, the study experiments with the idea of Collective Critical Consciousness and its application to transform the internet into a race-sensitive industry.

The study bridges the gap in racially sensitive, decolonial research on (Cyber)Bullying by involving those affected as knowledge-holders in Creative Participatory Action Research. The findings advance AfroGreek youth's proclamation of social media as a breeding ground for racism and how their proactive participation can help reshape the internet. It also results in developing Critical Consciousness as mapped out through the knowledge-holders' involvement in Critical Action, Political Self-Efficacy, and Critical Reflection.

The output actively contributes to creating impactful internet-based interventions and towards a more inclusive and informed societal framework. Finally, the study proves the efficacy of critical and diverse involvement through the launch of a youth-directed Anti-Bullying Collective.

The relationship between digital practices, gender, and intimacy in teenagers’ everyday life is gaining growing attention. We can look at digital media as environments that offer young people agency and spaces where they can construct and perform their identity (boyd 2014) through bricolage practices (Willett 2008) and by experimenting with their own selves, also with regard to gender and intimacy (Ferreira 2021; Metcalfe & Llewellyn 2020; Scarcelli 2015; De Ridder 2017; Livingstone & Mason 2015). Studies have also devoted attention to communicative interactions (e.g.,“sexting”), investigating both the incorporation of and resistance to specific gender and sexual ideologies (Ringrose et al. 2013; Scarcelli 2020).

The aim of our paper is to analyse how Italian teenagers (aged 15-18) (re)define their understanding of gender and intimacy by engaging with digital media and incorporating it into their daily lives. In the first step of our research we are conducting six focus groups with students (15-18) from secondary schools in six cities located in three Italian regions. In the second step, we will carry out in depth semi-structured interviews with teenagers. The combination of these methods will allow to explore topics such as teenagers' digital practices in relation to performing gender identities and sexual orientation on different platforms; teens’ interaction with others in relation to intimate practices; the use of specific platforms for homosocial interaction; use of digital resources to seek information about gender; digital media representations. Results cover a wide set of digital practices, organised along three (interrelated) dimensions: gender, sexuality and intimate relationships.

Text-to-image generation (AI art) has become a mainstream phenomenon since the introduction of DALL-E by OpenAI in January 2021 (Nast, 2023). ). On the one hand, AI art challenges definitions of creativity that center on anthropocentric values and discredits the contributions of artists in the training of these AI models (Knibbs, 2023). On the other hand, it blurs the line between artists and non-artists by enabling new ways of creating art (e.g., prompt engineering: an iterative and experimental text-based process to interact with text-to-image generation models). Regardless of one’s ethical stance, practitioners of AI art, including artists of various skills and non-artists, form and participate in online communities to showcase their wares, share practices and resources, and learn from each other.

This study uses a topic modeling approach to examine topics within three subreddit communities centered on three text-to-image generation models (r/StableDiffusion, r/midjourney, and r/weirddalle). The analysis, based on the top 500 posts from each subreddit over one month, reveals distinct community foci: r/StableDiffusion emphasizes technological innovations and technical learning, r/midjourney showcases AI art and prompt learning, while r/weirddalle is more competitive, focusing on creative or entertaining results. The study further derives topics from prompts extracted from the images, revealing preferences for popular media characters, high photorealism, and surrealist styles, with a notable emphasis on portraits of women.

This paper draws on literature in dance studies and analytic philosophical aesthetics to show how ontology and ownership are entwined in the context of dance online. I describe how the legal and social mechanisms through which the ownership of dance is managed are dependent upon (often implicit) assertions about dance’s ontology. I go on to explore the concept of the dance ‘work’ (see Pakes 2020) and propose that alternative ways of conceptualising dances might better reflect online practices for the making, sharing and ownership of dance. This research is funded by [anonymised] through the project [anonymised].

Ireland has become a predominant site for data centres in Europe. While data industries present their own speculative fictions for economic and technological development that are posed to shape the Irish landscape and write its future, this paper poses the question: what other speculative fictions exist for data industries in Ireland? Under the feet of shadows is a multimedia art project created by the author in collaboration with Irish novelist Mike McCormack that merges science fiction with folklore, real with imagined mythologies, and histories of technology in Ireland, involving critical and reflexive engagement with technics, proposing new means of imagining technological progress and development within the Irish rural context. The conceptual framework for the project focuses on how humans, technologies, and the landscape are inherently relational and co-constitutive, bringing together Gilbert Simondon’s and Yuk Hui’s philosophies of technology with media materialism and aesthetics that highlight material agency and entanglements of affective embodiment. Using arts-based research methods as speculative inquiry, the artwork tells a fictional origin myth of a yet-to-be built data centre in Killala, Ireland. Within Under the feet of shadows, there are attempts to identify an Irish cosmotechnics that is awkward, ambivalent, and wrought with frictions. This shift in emphasis to material engagements with the local rural landscape reframes entanglements of economics, politics, and technology in a manner that is rooted to the ground.

Contemporary artists using emerging technologies in their work are often positioned as innovators, mavericks, and diagnosticians, who work “outside” of the tech industry and thus bring sorely needed perspective to its developments. However, viewing new media artists as fully independent actors, devoid of any connection to industrial and corporate aims, serves to eclipse the long-standing and substantial ties that the field has to the protocols and priorities of the mainstream technology industry. These, in fact, have existed for as long as artists have attempted to integrate computation, electronics, networking, or other high-tech components into their work—both when these tools are owned and operated by corporations, but also in more diffuse, ideological ways.

This contribution, which draws from my larger dissertation work, traces the evolution of the cultural imaginary surrounding new media artists, defined in my research as practitioners who expand, reinvent, or misuse technological expression. By explicitly placing archives from three twentieth century “art and technology” initiatives against interviews with new media artists and cultural workers I conducted in the present day, I emphasize the foundational connections that new media artists have to industrial practices—and argue that this relationship can be traced back to the first attempts to place artists into collaborations with industry. As a result, industrial mandates have, to a large degree, shaped the popular conception of the new media art field, guiding both the practicalities of working with digital systems as well as notions of what artists “should” be doing with their work.

Over the past fifteen years Instagram has industrialised and platformised the everyday practices of creating and sharing digital images. Our posts and stories are both an archive of our lives and visual practices, but also part of the historical process of assembling image data sets for training machine vision systems. This paper presents the final part of a multi-year project where we use a combination of cultural and computational methods to explore the relationships between our everyday image-making practices and the algorithmic models of Instagram (Authors). We present findings from a study with 25 participants who have used Instagram for five or more years as part of their professional or creative practices. Participants downloaded and donated their complete archive of Instagram posts and stories. We then printed out 500 images from their profile as photographs and clustered their entire archive using our purpose-built machine vision system. In a co-analysis interview participants scrolled back through their Instagram profile, narrating changes in their practices and the platform over time. They then manually sorted the images printed from their archive and explored a visualisation of the algorithmic clustering of their images. Through this process of co-analysis we elicit the algorithmic imaginary of users and develop an intimate platform biography of how their practices are entangled with platform interfaces and algorithmic models.

Over the past few years, digital platforms from different sectors have started tailoring their content to both respond to and create certain moods, vibes, or ‘ambiences’. In so doing, they become ‘atmospheric architectures’ (Bohme 2020), entering the industry of emotional regulation. I posit that a critical-phenomenological framework is a productive epistemological, theoretical, and methodological resource for scrutinising this shift precisely at the intersection of embodied affect and the political economy of platformisation. By critical phenomenology I mean a phenomenological disposition that is not blind to the social, technical, and political environment in which it is situated (Couldry and Kallinikos 2018). This paper also dialogues with recent discussions both in public discourse and the relevant scholarship about a latent change in our digital sociality, in which the values for which we once celebrated digital media are now being replaced by a different mode of consumption, fruition, and attention (John 2022). Using the contemporary case studies to flesh out these new formations in emotional capitalism (Illouz 2007), I propose that we are entering a new stage in programmed sociality (Bucher 2018), focused less on sharing, connecting, or engaging, and more on the platformisation of the merely felt. The examination of this phenomenon demands us to acknowledge the significance of those mixed feelings – which involve an interplay of the affective and the computational – and of their entanglement with a profit-oriented corporate technoscape.

In this paper, I briefly recount the evolution in the use of the word ‘toggle,’ and build off it to theorize it as a concept.Today we know toggling as a verb, and the user interaction (UI) of switching between and moving across apps and activities. Prior to this, toggle was a noun that referred to fasteners on garments and on walls that held things in place. This evolution from a noun to a verb, helps attend to the fact that as people, we have always used our hands, heads, and objects to hold things together, as we switch between doing and being.

To theorize toggling, I will first detail my motivation, methods, and methodology. Then I will illustrate how toggling as a concept, enables reframing two dominant views on (1) how information is imagined to push users to do things and (2) how being a user, especially a consumer, is imagined to move us “out of touch.”

Toggling as a conceptual vessel places UI in this history of how our hands and fingers have interacted with surfaces of objects like buttons and made sense of the world. Placing interaction in our hands makes room for us as scholars to ask: how do people make sense of information and hold everything together as they switch between doing livelihood-care and being workers, consumers, business owners, householders and so on?

This work introduces Jewish entrepreneurialism on TikTok. The platform emerged as a prominent space for Jewish creators to showcase religion and culture, fostering visibility and community engagement. They have skillfully carved out a distinct realm for entrepreneurial labor by dedicating their content creation to cultivating the #JewTok. Entrepreneurial labor prompts creators to mine their own identities for content, blurring the lines between work and self-representation. For #JewTok creators, monetizing culture becomes deeply entwined with their identity as they transform aspects of their religion, ethnicity, heritage, and culture into fodder for engagement. We use ethnographic observations of 27 creators' profiles, supplemented by interviews with 19 creators, revealing entrepreneurial labour as Jewish Ambassadorship in four ways: (1) Jewish creators as cultural brokers, helping fellow Jews navigate non-Jewish dominant spaces, with their profiles serving as cultural hubs; (2) community builders who use TikTok's features to bridge interreligious gaps among marginalized groups; (3) justice advocates who address Jewish stereotypes, and (4) religion explorers who enhance understanding of Judaism's diverse identities. Our findings also reveal entrepreneurial labour as Jewish Hardship in two ways: (1) algorithmic antisemitism, described as baked biases in algorithms leading to the suppression of Jewish creators. This harm leads to the amplification of their content to harmful audiences perpetuating (2) religious voyeurism and surveillance, where creators' content transforms into voyeuristic spectacles, drawing unwanted attention. This dynamic underscores the urgent need for researchers to explore this creator economy, as similar patterns have already emerged in other creator communities across race, disability, gender, and sexuality.

Despite popular understandings of the internet teeming with pornography and offering safe harbor for LGBTQIA+ content, social media platforms are cracking down on sexual expression and sex work online. This panel examines the role that content moderation and platform governance play in censoring sexual expression online and the communities that engage in it. It documents the impact that censorship, banning, shadowbanning, and demonetization have on internet communities and highlights potential alternatives for platform governance. Author 1 examines the pole dancing community on Instagram and the impact that banning, shadowbanning, and content takedowns have on its constituents. In particular, she examines the impact that Instagram’s new ‘Account Status’ feature has had on pole dancers’ labor to manage their visibility on the platform. Author 2 examines the role that early cisheteronormative content moderation practices have had on shaping the algorithmic imaginary of Queer TikTok. He shows that it has resulted in ‘algorithmic folk remedies’ – like ‘algospeak’ – that are still used by Queer TikTokers in attempts to avoid demonetization, shadowbanning, and/or deplatforming. Authors 3 and 4 examine erotic webcam streamers and platforms and document the ways in which webcam platform policies work to discipline the labor of erotic webcam streamers. Content moderation is leveraged to keep streamers on the platform and capture their revenue streams. Author 5 examines how new and emerging independent small-scale platforms and cooperatives moderate sexual content. She documents the incredible difficulty of maintaining an alternative, sex positive, business model in the current political and economic landscape.

This study investigates the nexus between the attention economy and digital disinformation on TikTok, drawing from Esposito's adaptation of Luhmann’s system theory to the digital age and Swartz's exploration of the socio-economic layers of digital transactions. It zeroes in on cryptocurrency scams as a case study to illuminate how disinformation is propagated for economic gain, using TikTok's API for comprehensive analysis. The research employs advanced data analytics to examine how digital platforms, via algorithmic filtering, shape the flow and influence of content, thereby enabling the proliferation of disinformation markets. By thematic clustering of problematic Facebook narratives and identifying scam-specific jargon, this study pinpoints tactics used on TikTok related to the 2024 Bitcoin halving. It scrutinizes how manipulators exploit technical and platform-specific vulnerabilities for profit, integrating Luhmann's double contingency theory to elucidate the feedback loops that enhance content virality and algorithmic dissemination. This theoretical framework illuminates the complex interplay between user interactions and algorithmic preferences, which, in turn, feed into the economics of disinformation markets. The research underscores the strategic manipulation of digital platforms to foster disinformation, spotlighting the role of algorithms and user engagement in the commodification of attention within these markets. Through this lens, the study aims to provide insights into the operational dynamics of disinformation markets, offering a nuanced understanding of how digital misinformation is not merely a byproduct of technological advancement but a structured market leveraging the inherent vulnerabilities of digital platforms and their users.

The lifespan of virality on TikTok has become increasingly short and operates at a smaller-scale as the platform has become more and more fragmented by algorithmic segmentation. In the midst of this, music creators are grappling with what it means to be successful in this later stage of the platform. For this study, I conducted 26 semi-structured interviews with music artists and creators on TikTok about how the platform has affected the way they work and create music. I found that their approaches of optimization were heavily impacted by their personal and career goals. Many had found that the creation of viral content based on memes and covers that afforded constant visibility didn’t result in the monetary or music career milestones that they desired, so they had to use different approaches. I would like to characterize this new period of online musical labor as a period defined by platform negotiation, in which creators are recognizing that visibility is not always desirable and make decisions about how much to optimize their content for the platform based on their brand and career goals. As they engage in relational labor to support continued work, music creators cannot simply rely on the tenets of platform optimization in order to be successful. This paper examines the ways in which music creators grapple with these challenges and how musical labor is changing online.

"Format" denotes the rules, standards, and protocols that affect the look, feel, experience, and workings of a medium (Sterne, 2012). Introduced by Vine and popularized through TikTok, short video as a cultural format is often understood through the memetic imitation of cultural trends as the lingua franca of expressivity (Kaye et al., 2022; Zulli & Zulli, 2020). In the case of TikTok, proxies of creation –– from samples, effects, to audio samples –– function as key carriers of trends. These proxies of creation are not provided defaults; they are user-generated boundary resources (Ghazawneh & Henfridsson, 2013). Through an infrastructural inversion (Bowker, 1994) of TikTok's creation infrastructure, I examine how TikTok integrated "the creation of the proxies of creation" onto its platform ecosystem. I highlight how TikTok vertically integrated the creation of templates and effects via CapCut and Effect House. By standardizing the forms of these carriers of trends, TikTok made short video into a cultural format whose dual expressivity manifests through both the imitation and the creation of trends. In doing so, TikTok distributed newfound expressive potential to an emerging class of "trend-content creators." Besides playing the role of traditional taste-makers like DJs and magazine editors by the creation of trends, trend-content creators also "double-articulate" through the creation of "content" that carries the proxies of creation for others to replicate the trends. Such dialectics of creation, I argue, are unique to short video as a cultural format that is infrastructurally made trend-first.

Digital influencers grapple with communal and commercial content on their digital platforms. The hybridization of commercial and personal spaces has sparked debates about the paradox of authenticity (Zhao, 2021). There is a perception that developing an authentic self is crucial for commercial success. However, authenticity poses a contradiction: it brings influencers closer to market logic but distances them from audience recognition (Arriagada & Bishop, 2021), risking the loss of the “contract of trust with their followers” (Abidin & Ots, 2016, p.160) when integrating commercial brands into their social media posts. This authentic/commercial binary results in “authenticity work” (Banet-Weiser, 2021). Influencers often strive to make commercial content as personal as possible, with natural insertions into their routines.

This research identifies a movement contrary to making the commercial space natural and authentic. Brazilian influencers have adopted “commercial breaks” to announce advertising partnerships on Instagram stories overtly. This intentional interval aims to insert advertising outside of the ongoing daily stories, breaking the pattern of seamless integration. This study marks the beginning of an exploration into these strategies, aiming to formulate hypotheses regarding why digital influencers incorporate the “commercial break” into their advertising and the associated benefits for authenticity when disclosing commerciality. Conducted through a preliminary analysis spanning three years (2021-2023) of non-participant observation, the study focused on monitoring 12 Brazilian digital influencers from various niches on Instagram stories. The research has yielded some inferences, as the influencers benefited from this “programming” approach on Instagram reminiscent of practices in legacy media and interruption-based advertisements.

The rise to prominence of visual social media platforms (VSMPs) including TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube has led to increasing amounts of research attention directed to these platforms. As research engages multimodal platforms, representing their content (including text, audio, image, and video components) increasingly becomes both important and complex. The AoIR Internet Research Ethics (IRE) 3.0 guidelines stipulate that “we need to elaborate an ethics addressing the distinctive issues clustering around the production, sharing, and thereby research on visual images” (franzke et al., 2020). In this paper, we begin making such an elaboration, describing considerations necessary when representing screenshots. We provide an overview of four current approaches to representing VSMP posts and annotate their tensions.

This paper introduces reciprocal digital methods, a novel research framework tailored to the exigencies of studying social media in what has been called a post-API landscape (Bruns, 2019; Freelon, 2018). In this paper we build on scholarly discourse on the epistemology and ethics of social media data (Lomborg & Bechmann, 2014; Marres & Gerlitz, 2016), and the current debates about the future of social media research (Bruns, 2019; Freelon, 2018; Ohme & Araujo, 2022; Tromble, 2021). We propose a model that is intended to push the field forward, merging approaches to social media that have been largely disparate, and combining computational analysis of user-level digital trace data and interviews with the same users.

We argue that user perspectives and digital trace data should not be considered as separate methods but as part of a reciprocal exchange and a broader methodological pluralism (Danermark et al., 2019). Digital data, while rich in potential insights, often lacks the context necessary to interpret user behavior and platform interaction accurately. Conversely, interviews provide depth and narrative but are generally not reliable for capturing use patterns. By combining these two elements, the proposed methodology enables researchers to bridge the gap between narrative and pattern, and between media use and media practice. Moreover, we propose that inviting users into the quantitative analysis process can help correct for the noted lack of agency users have had in big data studies (Bishop & Kant, 2023).

This paper presents three projects where we have developed participatory digital research methods designed to extend observability of digital advertising on social media platforms and engage with users’ individual experiences with digital advertising. In each approach, participants collected instances of digital advertising from social media apps by taking screenshots or using a screen-capture mobile app. Participants also assumed active roles in the interpretation and analysis of the collected ads through dialogue with research teams in the form of SMS chats, surveys and interviews. We then critically reflect on the politics and ethics of participatory screen capture as a method that emerges as a response to ‘platform opaqueness’. Because of the lack of platform transparency, one of the only reliable ways for researchers to study advertising in these spaces is to work directly with users to capture what they see. In our projects, the practice of screenshotting facilitated scaffolded consent as participants chose the images to send and discuss with researchers. These approaches also position participants as experts on their own experience with and theories of algorithmic, digital platform advertising. We conclude by considering the significance of collected data: collections of ads that illustrate the relationships between users and digital advertising models. The ads targeted to individual users reflect platform ad models’ attempts to respond and pre-empt user engagement, and in the process, construct digital subjectivities. By co-analysing digital advertising with users, we observe the ways social media platform users and algorithmic advertising models continuously enact and react to each other.

During the coronavirus pandemic, Israeli Telegram became a staple venue of pandemic news, as the platform served as the Ministry of Health’s primary official output. Over time, Telegram also became home to a community of ‘Guerilla Analysts’ who pooled together their analytical resources to create a ‘National Graph Headquarters’. Utilizing the same data as the MoH channel, this ragtag crew of data-loving laypeople created a space in which data-literacies are shared and developed. Informed by conceptualizations of messaging apps as “news meso-space(s)”, digital collaborative information-making practices, and the notion that visualizations can promote civic deliberation and political empowerment, this paper explores the rhetorical and discursive framework that enabled informational migration and evolution, and the co-production of data-oriented pandemic narratives across both groups, resulting in an exceptionally empowering informational eco-system. It does so by applying qualitative rhetorical visualization analysis to 100 pairs of institutional and guerilla visualizations of the same data, prior to qualitative discourse analysis of 30 related comment threads. Findings reveal that while the ‘Institutional Voice’ remained focused on conservative visualizations of the present and past, guerilla analysts often re-visualize MoH visualizations into predictive narratives, and take bolder swings in proposing actionable implications. While primarily focused on sociable elucidation of complex analyses, comment discourse also challenges and re-visualizes ‘Guerilla’ narratives, further extending informational empowerment. Predominantly conceptualized as a subversive venue, I highlight Telegram as a civic platform and propose a conceptualization of messaging apps as productive and empowering meso-spaces, utilizing common social and analytical resources towards a common good.

Scholars of authenticity on social media have highlighted its situational, constructed, and performative aspects, and how it may manifest differently among lay social media users, influencers, celebrities and other public figures. Authenticity has been defined as a social norm of ‘realness’ that changes in time, is strategically used by people, groups and institutions, but still has symbolic and cultural value. Further, research has shown that performances and perceptions of authenticity on social media rely on carefully curated, normative and relatable rather than entirely accurate representation.

In this roundtable, five initial speakers will offer a short provocation on why they think authenticity (still) matters on social media:

Relying on her pioneering anthropological work on influencer cultures, Crystal Abidin (Curtin University, Australia) will review the generational shifts in how “commercial authenticity” is being performed and contested across four ‘eras’ of social media norms.

Drawing on her work on youth culture and activism online, Jing Zeng (Utrecht University, the Netherlands) will speak about the contestation of “authenticity” amongst Chinese diasporic activists.

Based on her research into platformed sexual and gender representation, Stefanie Duguay (Concordia University, Canada) will discuss how queer users negotiate platform affordances, governance, and economic structures (e.g. creator funds) to authentically self-brand sexual identity.

Building on his ethnography with beachcombers who collect sea glass and share / sell it online, David Kneas (University of South Carolina, USA) will explore authenticity as enacted in the context of discovery, resourceness and identity.

Finally, relying on her work on visual and sexual practices on social media, Katrin Tiidenberg (Tallinn University, Estonia), will speak to the role of pseudonymity in experiences of the authentic.

We will then open up to discussion with an intent to dialogue about the varied meanings, functions, and enactments of authenticity on social media.

This study aims to investigate the increasingly prominent phenomenon of queerbaiting in Chinese social media, which is to bait and lure the queer audience in for an existing media text, through queer representations including erotica. With the development of streaming media and its innovative application in e-commerce especially during the COVID-19, social media platforms such as Douyin have become a rich site for economic and cultural analyses. This project is significant that since the Chinese government and platforms regulate queer content in a seemingly strict way, for example, those who express ‘abnormal’ sexual orientation will be banned. However, queerbaiting as a genre of media production still finds its way through short videos and gets away with tightened regulatory regimes. At the same time, Douyin’s huge monetization potential with e-commerce in various formats (e-gift-giving, sponsorship, advertorials) makes queerbaiting as a marketing strategy an indispensable part of Chinese social media that attracts scholarly and market attention. Furthermore, most queer content creators would self-present on the Douyin as straight especially when they engage with queerbaiting strategies, making both their media production sustainable in a tight regulatory regime and data accessible for my research. The study emphasizes a departure from fan-centred queerbaiting research and instead examines from the producer's perspective, dissecting the actions and goals of influencers to attract followers, monetize and profit by manipulating audience interpretations and queer imaginations as their strategies, at the same time, to navigate and protect themselves from homophobic regulatory and social environments.

New age spirituality is a pastiche of practices and beliefs ranging from divination, such as tarot card readings, to channelling and speaking to the dead through psychic mediums, to alternative healthcare such as Reiki or homeopathy. On TikTok, new age spiritualists have become content creators, making crystal reiki ASMR videos, quickly shuffling tarot cards on livestreams, and explaining their manifestation practices in vlogs. They have solidified themselves as part and parcel of the platform ecosystem with some videos garnering over 10 million views. Often new age content creators will begin their videos like this, ‘If you’re seeing this on your “for you page” someone has probably put a hex on you’ or 'I don’t care if you believe in tarot readings or not because the universe obviously sent you this video for a reason'. The implication being that the algorithmic decision making that led to this video appearing on the “for you page” (FYP) was not mathematical or coincidental, but magical. This presentation takes a journey through these new age spirituality videos that claim that their videos have arrived at a viewers’ feed through cosmic algorithmic intervention. First, I examine what Cotter et al. (2023) describe as “algorithmic conspirituality” in new age content creators' videos. And then explore how this is mobilised and monetised through garnering attention and promoting themselves, techniques central to the political economies of digital platforms. Ultimately, I reflect on how commercialisation, magic and algorithmic media converge on digital media platforms like TikTok.

Social media platforms are key actors within the influencer ecosystem, mediating and regulating how influencers can engage in monetisation practices. In this socio-legal paper, we examine one form of monetisation, influencer marketing, to understand how platform policies and interfaces shape commercial content for influencers. We situate our enquiry of regulation by platforms within the regulation of platforms. Namely, we focus on the legal obligations of disclosure of commercial content under European consumer law. Bringing together an analysis of platform documentation for Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube, and insights generated through a walkthrough of each platform, we present preliminary findings. First, we address the terminology used by platforms to refer to influencers with a focus on how types of account types (mis)align with the qualification of influencers as traders. Second, we outline how platforms frame influencer marketing and establish rules for this form of monetisation. We critically reflect on how the narrow framing of commercial content obscures legal requirements and how platforms position legal obligations including disclosures. Our walkthrough of the platform-facilitated disclosure tools highlights differences in access and visibility with some platforms seeming to deprioritise the visibility of this at the level of the interface. Overall, we argue that enforcing disclosure practices among influencers must be contextualised within the dynamics of platform governance, where platforms hold power in shaping the monetisation landscape. In keeping with recent legislation on platform liability, platforms could play a more proactive role in shaping an environment conducive for influencers to comply with duties.

This study is situated within a broader research framework that aligns with the industrious paradigm articulated by Arvidsson (2019). Specifically, our focus lies in scrutinizing the operational dynamics of micro-influencers operating within an economic model characterized by high labor input and minimal capital investment. The lens through which we examine this phenomenon is grounded in a theme already entrenched in the analog dimension—namely, the second-hand and vintage market.

In this research, our primary objective is to gain insight into whether content creators employ their reputational capital on social networks for purposes related to traditional work instead of activities solely associated with the platform itself. We aim to examine the core reasons why content creators invest their time, energy, and aspirations in producing professional content on their social profiles.

To conduct this research, we carried out 15 preliminary semi-structured interviews with micro-influencers who operate on Instagram and/or TikTok in the niche of second-hand and vintage.

We found the micro-influencers to be motivated to create an online reputation, but not with the aspiration of becoming influencers. They devote their efforts to personal branding and sharing second-hand content on platforms like Instagram and TikTok for professionalisation. Even individuals who could potentially (or could easily aspire to) generate direct income from the platform do not dream of becoming influencers. Their dream job is to have a job.

Artificial intelligence has emerged as a major technological shift in disinformation ecosystems globally, as the nascent “industry” of deep fakes, microtargeting, “surgical” influence operations and predictive analytics is expanding at a blistering pace with the use of new AI powered tools and tactics. Uneven in their application yet significant in their rhetoric and potentialities, AI technologies are rewriting existing arrangements to deploy disinformation at scale and in deeply deceptive ways.

This roundtable will bring global perspectives on how a new class of political consultants and disinformation-for-hire sectors have begun to alter the conditions of political discourse in different regions of the world with and around the use of AI. What are the latest developments and concerns around AI’s use in disinformation systems? How are different actors – state, non-state and paralegal – engaging AI in manipulating political narratives? How are social media companies responding to growing prevalence of AI-generated fake images, profile pictures and amplifiers? Equally, what are the implications of applying AI in provenance research and hate speech detection? How can AI-assisted content moderation systems keep pace with disinformation innovators? The roundtable will raise these questions, highlighting the technopolitical and cultural dimensions of what it means to reckon with AI, as scholars struggle to address deep seated historical tensions that undergird disinformation and extreme speech dynamics. Panelists will bring their expertise on different regions of the world as well as theoretical debates to highlight AI as a pressing context to understand and address the “disinformation industry”.

Political actors engage in information manipulation by emitting propagandistic messaging through traditional, digital and social media spaces to accrue and consolidate political power. Such actors have been conceptualized as “informational autocrats” (Guriev and Treisman, 2019), in that they accumulate power through mobilizing propaganda and silencing opposition rather than relying upon traditional strategies of authoritarianism, e.g., violence. While scholars have identified the ways in which political actors execute propagandistic campaigns in recent autocracies, the strategies of these leaders in democratic environments is left understudied. Specifically, how these actors infringe upon advertising mechanisms as an additional pathway towards total information control. We investigate this pathway within states experiencing democratic backsliding; meaning, the weakening of democratic institutions and processes such as the independent media, free and fair elections, or judiciary autonomy. Both Hungary and Bolivia are experiencing democratic backsliding – here, a strategic weakening of the state by governing forces – through state sponsored propaganda via mainstream news and social media channels. We argue that the Hungarian and Bolivian states are manipulating the information ecosystem through its dominance over advertising mechanisms within media and technology industries. Through 30 qualitative, in-depth interviews we find that governing parties weaponize advertising revenue to accrue partisan favor, crush independent and critical voices, and flood social media feeds through its dominance over digital advertising.

Platforms have become dominant media infrastructures that mediate political interactions. While studies analyze the outcomes of platform logics, the underlying mechanisms that led to these outcomes are either expressed as general media logics or in technologically deterministic terms. Empirical challenges also make it difficult to disentangle platforms’ structural effects from other social or political dynamics. This research investigates the underlying mechanisms of platform logics that configure political interactions from a network perspective. It examines the structural configurations of networked political interactions on Twitter using Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGM). It analyzes three election networks on Twitter during the 2022 Philippine Elections as cases and assesses the structural features of these networks, which correspond to structural mechanisms that configure political interactions on Twitter.

Preliminary analysis from two out of three of the networks suggests that Twitter promotes political interactions (edges) by facilitating more direct interactions among users (outdegree). It also facilitates more symmetrical relationships among accounts through reciprocated interactions (reciprocity). Specific to the media event network is the tendency to follow a cascade path of interaction (two-path), while the political event network is likely to create incentives for users who frequently interact with others (indegree popularity). Anticipated findings for the third network are discussed in the extended abstract. The study provides a conceptual articulation of the structural mechanisms of platform logics using inferential network analysis to define how platforms create path dependencies for political interactions.

As the EU Digital Services Act increasingly involves civil society organisations (CSOs) in the context of the development and application of its Code of Conduct, CSOs’ role in moderation policies requires further scrutiny. Theoretically, this paper seeks to contribute to platform governance as a complex multi-stakeholder dynamic process with unresolved tensions between different policy actors and their interests. At the European level, we can schematically understand this process to involve a triangle with three sets of actors: EU policy makers, platforms, and CSOs. We see platform governance as a terrain of struggle where no actor can unilaterally impose their will, but where power is exercised asymmetrically. Since CSOs are called upon to represent the interests of their constituencies and especially those communities that are vulnerabilised through harmful contents and current platform content policies, it is important to examine their role in the emerging EU content regulatory field more closely. In particular, this paper poses the following research questions: How do CSOs determine their policies vis-a-vis platforms? How independent are they from platforms and to what extent do they align their views with those of platforms? Empirically, the paper draws on participant ethnographic research in a leading CSO alongside in depth interviews with key informants and document analysis. The findings indicate that notwithstanding the aspirational role of CSOs in upholding fundamental rights and the rights of their constituencies, there are few safeguards against platform influence. This may end up compromising the crucial role that CSOs play in platform governance.

The question as to the most apt regulatory model to apply to the internet is one that occupies legislators, policymakers and courts around the world. This question was recently debated in two diametrically opposed judgments by the Court of Appeals for the Fifth and the Eleventh Circuit, triggered by challenges to the Texas and Florida ‘anti-online censorship’ laws. The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit likened platforms to common carriers, disputed that their content curation amounts to First Amendment protected speech, and upheld the constitutionality of the Texas law. The Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected platforms’ characterisation as common carriers. It argued that their content moderation decisions are First Amendment protected editorial judgements and declared the Florida law unconstitutional. These judgments did not address the closely linked, and equally vexed question whether users should be able to assert their free speech rights against social media platforms. In Germany, this question has been fought in a multitude of court cases, and has divided courts and commentators alike. The pending Supreme Court judgment and a possible German Constitutional Court verdict on the power of platforms to moderate users’ speech are likely to decisively shape the future of the internet. This paper proposes to contribute to this debate by adopting a comparative constitutional methodology to test, first, the historical analogies between old and new media employed in the Florida and Texas cases, and secondly, the limits of regulating social media platforms by human rights.

This article examines increasingly ubiquitous and casual uses of the term ‘psyops’ in both fringe and mainstream discourses online. It charts the trajectory of ‘psyops’ from deep web spaces like 4chan to social media platforms, recognising and examining a turn to ‘psyop realism’: a resignation to the transformation of the epistemological turmoil created by the convergence of military psyops, disinformation, and behavioral manipulation by commercial platforms into a paradigmatic condition of ‘living online’. But the article also seeks to situate concerns about manipulation, simulated reality and agency panic within a longer history of conspiracy culture - in both works of reflexive postmodern fiction and the reductive, knee-jerk conspiracist cries of ‘false flag’ and ‘crisis actor’ from conspiracy entrepreneurs like Alex Jones. The article considers engagements with psyop realism in both the work of Trevor Paglen and viral internet memes. The former helpfully defamiliarizes military psyops and the latter offers a vernacular media critique of the current information environment. In all of these engagements with the term ‘psyop’, there is an ambivalence between the literal and the figural that far from needing to be resolved, speaks to the very condition of datafied digital experience today.

This work in progress paper studies the phenomenon of “hashtag hijacking”— which refers to when “a hashtag is used for a different purpose than the one originally intended” (Xanthopoulos et al., 2016, p.1) — in a large-scale longitudinal dataset of Twitter posts (N >10 million) spanning over 15 years (2005 - 2023), collected using its academic API in February of 2023, prior to the site's termination of that service. The dataset concerns a diverse set of issues, collected via hashtags, ranging from discussions of climate change mitigation, to digital currency to life extension technologies. What they all have in common is that, at the time of collection, they had all recently been subject to a process that we refer to as issue conspiracization. This large-scale longitudinal dataset of formerly “on-topic” but subsequently “hijacked” hashtags provides us with the unique opportunity to analyze the overtime dynamics of what can be thought of as the discourse networks – “discourse coalitions, and the storylines they mobilize, change over time” (Markard et al., 2021, p. 316)— that surround on issue spaces (Völker & Saldivia Gonzatti, 2024; Marres & Rogers 2005). Specifically, in this paper we are interested both in telling the story of how an issue space gets hijacked and in making sense of what emerges at the intersection of these hijackings — an often confusing combination of issues that one prominent commentator referred to as a "conspiracy smoothie" (Klein 2020).

This paper examines how conspiracy theories anchor affective communities through an analysis of the YouTube comment section for the actor and comedian turned political influencer Russell Brand. Comparing videos before and after Brand’s shift to covid scepticism, I explore like counts, reply networks, and other commenting patterns in a dataset of 217,157 comments and conduct an in-depth analysis of 2000 top comments. The findings show first, a shift toward right-wing viewpoints; second, a reduction in comment length and comment replies alongside an increase in likes; third, a sharp rise in proclamations of Brand fandom; and fourth, a steep increase in references to conspiracy. The in-depth analysis reveals that comments focused not on narrating the content of conspiracies but on celebrating conspiracy as the basis of a political community and as a defence against accusations of paranoia. I argue that conspiracy theories can function as formal categories that anchor affective communities.

Conspiracy theories have been studied increasingly in recent years, with the main research approach to understanding conspiracy theorists focusing on their personal characteristics. However, research has not yet clarified the role of online communities in the identity and social experience of believers. To address this, this research endeavor examines the social and community dynamics among conspiracy theory believers, focusing on the case study of the public Facebook group "The Flat Earth Community – Israel." Through a qualitative content analysis of posts and comments from within the group, the study reveals the role of a sense of community in the experiences of group participants. Findings reveal that participants seek appreciation and solidarity within the group while engaging in boundary work to maintain the authenticity of group members and defend the group against 'threats from the outside.' This research offers a deeper understanding of how online communities, serving as safe spaces for individuals whose beliefs are marginalized by societal norms, can fulfill a similar function for conspiracy theory believers. Such an in-depth understanding can help researchers to contend with the negative aspects of belief in conspiracy theories, for example through the consideration of alternative mechanisms that could satisfy participants’ need for a sense of community.

Given the breathless development of AI applications and its discourse led by hegemonic actors, the space for ‘un-blackboxing’- developing a critical technical practice around AI is limited and diminished. The current state of Gen-AI tools as the default and proprietary manifestations of specific technical developments claim to curate and advance user-friendly systems but in the process, conceal decisions of data, procedures, and interface-level design. This extension of a furthermore passive Internet consumer, for whom information will be curated demands a reframing. We propose that in curating information, AI technologies are performing an act of concealment. While the popular discourse on GenAI in different generations has been about what these applications produce – we are more critically invested in what these apps conceal when they curate the information that is designed for consumption.

We are thus offering a provocation in understanding the role and function of emerging AI: Emerging AI introduces a new function of the digital author – Concealment. Concealment of information which has historically been treated as an act of censorship, extraordinary political retraction, sensitive redaction, or strategic information shaping, has now become the default in our GenAI networks. This panel brings together 4 academics, researchers, educators, who draw from 4 very different contexts in the US, UK, Germany, and Hong Kong, to think about Concealment as the new author function of our Gen-AI times. All of us draw from our original research, classroom practice, and engagement with other stakeholders in the field to think through this new authorship as a way of critically examining the information making with Gen-AI.

The male supremacist ecosystem has undergone significant changes in recent years. Manosphere terminology and rhetoric have increasingly permeated into the mainstream, finding their way into the digital content consumed by previously uninitiated users. Incels (involuntary celibates) have grown in reach and impact. Meanwhile, many pick-up artists (PUAs) have either disappeared or rebranded themselves as life coaches. This latter trend is largely attributable to the rise of influencer culture, which has enabled a new raft of neo-masculinist and male supremacist entrepreneurs to exploit male insecurities under the guise of ‘mental health’ and ‘motivation’, and to optimise the amplification potential of platforms such as YouTube Shorts and TikTok. Another significant development has been the co-option of anti-feminist women into these spaces in the form of ‘tradwife’ and far-right influencers. This paper reports on the qualitative findings of a study which tracked, recorded and coded the content recommended to 10 experimental or ‘sockpuppet’ accounts on 10 blank smartphones, 5 on YouTube Shorts and 5 on TikTok. By coding all content related to men’s rights, anti-feminism and neo-masculinist influencers, we were able to determine not only the frequency but also the nature of manosphere recommendations, based on different age profiles, interests and types of interaction. The research suggests a rapid and under-researched shift in the communicative practices of the manosphere, transitioning from more obscure platforms and meme cultures, into increasingly mainstream platforms and practices, promoting and monetising capitalist masculinities by leveraging the talking points of reactionary culture wars.

In this paper, we explore transnational discursive campaigns that use online popular culture to consolidate a “countercultural” vision of hard to extreme right politics. Hyperpartisan sites form a “mirror universe” or alternate news industry, counterposing their passionate partisanship against what they deem the fraudulent objectivity of mainstream media. In our preliminary study, we noted that “anti-woke” hashtags and memes were heavily freighted with transphobic images and messages and co-occurred with a range of other far-right content (with strong currents of anti-immigration, misogynist, “anti-system,” and conspiracy themes). Presented in mocking tones and mobilized by hyperpartisan sites, transphobic memes participate in consolidating far-right hegemony via online countercultural forms. In mapping the distribution patterns of this content, we observed 1) the extent to which a range of seemingly “independent” sites distribute the same content within a short period of times; 2) how “anti-woke” hashtags and memes served to consolidate a far-right worldview and package it as countercultural; 3) and finally, how transphobic content came to constitute something of a “federating” theme – an ideological entry point into or representative of a larger ensemble of sociopolitical arguments. In this sense, transphobia works as a federating meme, creating information cascades that promote alt-right ideologies. Information cascades describe patterns of online conformity (Lemieux 2003) on social media platforms like Twitter. By tracking a range of Quebecois right-wing influenceurs, we aim to ascertain the opportunistic mobilisation and reach of transphobic content in this Quebecois alternative influence network.

In 2020, the subreddit r/GenderCritical—one of the most active “gender critical” (GC) spaces on Reddit—was banned by the platform for promoting hateful, transphobic conduct. Following the closure of r/GenderCritical (and subsequent banning of dozens of high-profile, transphobic subreddits including r/ActualWomen, r/GenderCriticalSociety, and r/truelesbians), GC users—especially those in North America and Western Europe—migrated to more hidden, invite-only spaces. These included Discord servers as well as (much like alt-right alternative platforms Parler and Truth Social) platforms run by GCs themselves: Spinster.xyz, the short-lived Giggle app, subforums on Mumsnet, and Ovarit—an invite-only forum which imitates Reddit’s architecture launched by former moderators of r/GenderCritical. While we might celebrate the closure of openly hateful communities on major social platforms, a crucial side-effect of the GC dispersal is that their activity has become (following patterns in reactionary political movements online more broadly) increasingly shrouded and insular. In this project, we provide an overview of the current landscape of GC activity on social media as it exists in the post-r/GenderCritical era. We describe how users are “peaked” (the GC equivalent of “redpilled”) and pipelined from algorithmic media platforms into insular and extremist spaces such as Ovarit, Mumsnet, and Discord. We then examine discourse within two popular GC forums, Ovarit and Mumsnet (specifically: Mumsnet’s “Feminism: Sex & gender” board), to identify how these groups circulate disinformation, perform political mythmaking, and construct and reinscribe reactionary identities in the context of GC ideology and extremism.

At this moment, as online platforms are overrun with bots, AI content, and declining user bases, media scholars ask what will happen after the platformatized internet transforms into something else. As we look to the many different possible futures, we must also ask: what will happen to the nearly two decades of information on these sites as their userbases migrate to platform alternatives and the original platforms are no longer viable? What will happen to the records from the most vulnerable users, those historically marginalized and erased from traditional archiving efforts, such as queer and trans individuals? In this paper, we call for specific attention to be paid to the unique characteristics and limitations of digital archiving efforts, especially as it pertains to queer and trans folks. To do so, we consider and introduce the concept of hostile digital archives to articulate the possible futures of web history.

To propose an alternative to traditional archival methodologies, we draw from scholarship in web histories, critical archive studies, and speculative design considerations for hostile, negative, and adversarial design that meaningfully imagine alternatives to current limitations in digital recordkeeping practices. To do so, we introduce the hostile digital archive, and provide three case studies for analysis, each of which explores a different aspect of hostility in digital archiving. We define a hostile digital archive as one that calls attention to the dynamic nature of born-digital objects through its format or content, and, in so doing, subverts traditional understandings of archives as neutral sites of static preservation.

This panel argues that social media is a key actor in the health and wellness industries, influencing how users participate in discussions and conversations related to wellbeing, health, and embodied experience. Drawing together interdisciplinary qualitative methods to advocate for a critical, feminist approach, the panel focuses on the influence of health-related social media content on users, as well as the effects of these platforms on professional content creators. The first presentation poses a methodological intervention, using Situational Analysis to map the FemTech industry, contending that social media is an important site of research. The second paper presents a close reading of FemTech influencer advertisements on social media, considering the role of influencers in promoting health and medical products. The final paper considers how everyday social media users are emerging as key actors in shaping understandings and definitions of ADHD. Together, the panel sheds light on how social media platforms have become crucial sites of information about bodily health and wellness for both traditional healthcare industry actors, non-professional users, and content creators. In conversation with one another, the papers present a detailed discussion of the relationships between social media and health, advocating for critical methodological approaches and frameworks. This interdisciplinary and globally engaged panel ultimately highlights the influence of social media on reproductive health technologies, influencer marketing, mental health, and the healthcare industry at large.

The increasing reliance on automated processes for content moderation, driven by regulatory pressures and the imperatives of advertising-based business models, has raised critical issues, especially as regards their effectiveness. This contribution examines the implications of AI-driven content moderation within the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) framework, focusing on Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs). It investigates the extent to which insights on automated content moderation across the EU can be discerned from the DSA’s Statement of Reasons (SoRs) database. By analysing content moderation practices across eight VLOPs over four months, using data from the SoRs submissions and transparency reports, this study aims to assess the relationship between automation and countries, exploring disparities in moderation.

Findings indicate a predominance of EU or EEA-level moderation, with variations in the adoption of automation and manual processes across platforms. The study highlights discrepancies in responsiveness across countries and questions the feasibility of swift content moderation, as often required by policymakers. This underscores the critical role of transparency in fostering platform observability, that is a dynamic process to understanding the socio-technical affordances of digital platforms in a way that enables accountability.

However, we also identify the limitations and inconsistencies within the SoRs database and transparency reports. This suggests that, while the DSA mandates a degree of transparency, it may not suffice for comprehensive observability or understanding of content governance practices. In conclusion, the study offers insights into the operational, legal, and ethical dimensions of AI-driven content moderation, contributing to discussions on democratic accountability and platform governance.

Big Tech has been involved in several controversies in recent years. Data leaks, whistleblowers, and social experiments have raised alarms about the dubbed toxic and unaccountable power of platforms and, more broadly, about the increasing crisis of accountability in digital societies (Cooper et al., 2022; Khan, 2018; Marres, 2021). At the intersection of digital sociology, media studies, and STS, this research explores how different actors make and unmake connections between social media platforms and societal harms. The study focuses on mapping a specific platform controversy: the Facebook Files/Papers, a leak in 2021 of internal documents from Meta by the former employee Frances Haugen. The disclosures partially exposed what Meta knew about the consequences of its interface designs, data, and algorithms (Hendrix, 2021; Horwitz, 2021). By combining digital and ethnographic methods, I followed the disclosures across different media settings to analyse how they were made public and which actors, issues, and framings gained prominence during the controversy. As I will show, journalists, advocacy groups, and critics promoted a ‘strategic causalism’ to strengthen the connection between Meta platforms and specific social harms. This was contrasted by the ‘strategic ambiguity’ mobilised by Meta spokespersons to undermine such claims and disperse their responsibility to other actors (e.g. users, malicious actors). The analysis highlights a US-centric theatre of accountability that overlooks crucial issues from the actual disclosures, revealing the asymmetries and displacements when platforms are put on trial.

This study examines the indirect lobbying strategies deployed by major digital platforms, to oppose Brazil’s "Fake News Bill", which sought to regulate internet intermediaries in the country. Drawing from primary data collected during the lobbying campaign in April-May 2023, the study analyzes platform ads, search engine recommendations, and direct user communications.

The findings reveal systematic violations of platform policies, including unlabelled political ads and exploitation of exclusive platform affordances unavailable to competitors. Digital platforms leveraged their market dominance and technological tools, aligning with far-right disinformation narratives while mobilizing public opposition under the guise of protecting user interests. These practices highlight the misuse of economic power and self-regulation to resist oversight, emphasizing the need for stricter accountability measures. Future research should investigate the broader influence of such campaigns on public opinion.

This paper examines the European Union's regulatory strategies, focusing on the European Media Freedom Act (EMFA), to tackle the challenges arising from the increasing concentration of power and the influence exerted by platforms within digital media ecosystems. It scrutinises the pertinent regulations and pinpoints the gaps in effectively mitigating the risks of monopolisation and concentration that contribute to the decline of media pluralism and endanger independent and local journalism. The primary oversight concerns the escalating involvement of platforms as digital infrastructure and AI providers, which amplifies their economic and political power over the digital media landscapes. Despite the intentions behind current regulations, such as the EMFA, Digital Services Act (DSA), and Digital Markets Act (DMA), they fall short in fully addressing these threats and in promoting a sustainable and pluralistic digital news industry.

In an academic milieu in which a lot of critical attention is dedicated to the data-grabbing, algorithmically biased, and asymmetrical power of massive techno-corporations, this panel explores how a focus on situated ordinary practices can provide us with a more complex, nuanced, and even at times contradictory account of what happens when pervasive digital technologies are experienced in everyday life. It does so via a combination of empirical research and theoretical development in a number of platformised and datafied domains: social media, music and generative AI. Juxtaposition of these topics and approaches, and dialogue between the authors and audience, will, we hope, forefront struggles, disputes, and ambivalences concerning what people actually do with the digital systems that they engage with. As feminist scholars established many years ago, the everyday is trivial and yet profoundly politically charged; ordinary experience is always imbued with power dynamics, hierarchies, asymmetries, and emerging modes of governmentality. Using empirically-based case studies, the panel engages with a tricky question: how can we theorise power and agency while making sense of the textures and poetics of everyday life, if the everyday is precisely in the unremarkable, the unnoticed, in that which escapes our grasp?

From daily cold plunges to meticulous morning routines to obsessive fitness tracking, there is a rising cohort of American male influencers centered around the notion of reaching “maximum potential” physically and mentally. Focusing on a cohort I’m calling “Masculinized Optimization Influencers,” I argue that this group is best understood through the lens of Sara Ahmed’s (2004) “affective economies.” Defined as those who place a dual focus on men’s need to hustle equally at the gym and in their career, Masculine Optimization Influencers present a particular vision of masculinity that binds together physical discipline with financial success. Crucially though, this is presented as much more than a selfish pursuit, this cohort’s approach joins a long American tradition of presenting bodywork as a moral imperative (White et al., 1995). Moreover, as this research will argue, they construct this path of self-optimization as a sacred pursuit. Such an approach attempts to justify hierarchical relations at a time when masculinity and capitalism are facing critique. Through identifying how “emotions circulate between bodies and signs,” and paying particular attention to the emotions of shame and disgust, this research examines how this affective economy mobilizes emotions to sacralize their ascendance in a dissymmetric economic system (Ahmed, 2004, p. 119).

This paper studies the mainstreaming of far-right radicalisation on social media platforms and the ways online visuals help this type of extremism to spread, by examining a recent and popular online phenomenon: male self-help influencers.The article first argues that the purported expertise, rhetoric, and technological affordances used by male self-help influencers serve to spread toxic masculinity, misogyny, and heteronormativity. These influencers brand themselves as entrepreneurial and authoritative experts embedded within the global neoliberal consumer landscape, consistent with burgeoning mainstream interest in ‘wellness’ and ‘male success’. Second, the paper shows how seemingly “apolitical” and “neutral” media content (self-help videos) and their creators (self-help influencers), combined with references to global media cultures and manosphere memes, perpetuate a covert and “acceptable” form of far-right ideology. In participating in and creating this seemingly “apolitical” wellness culture, these influencers become fun and accessible symbols of a widespread far-right movement online, perpetuating stereotypical gender norms and an idealised performance of masculinity. To examine men’s self-help videos by UK creators and the extent of their “covert” but widespread far-right radicalisation, we focused on the mainstream visual-centric social media platforms of YouTube and TikTok, identifying three case studies of self-help influencers with large followings and prominent online visibility: Hamza (2.03M YouTube subscribers), 1STMAN (158K YouTube subscribers), and Garrygunnshow (395K TikTok followers). Due to the reach of these influencers, we argue that they reflect the mainstreaming of online gender-based radicalisation in the UK (and on a global scale due to the wider reach of content in English).

For decades, scholars and public intellectuals have touted a “crisis of masculinity”: the notion that men are isolated, lonely, and hopeless, which makes them more susceptible to the messaging of right-wing backlash movements. Our paper focuses on how this narrative plays out within BreadTube, a community of YouTubers who espouse leftist and socialist views on a range of issues, and who often capitalize on trends in the alt-right media sphere to generate content that aims to counter reactionary rhetoric online. We examine how these BreadTubers respond to the “crisis of masculinity” narrative by analyzing a data set of 27 videos collected through a “digital snowball” sampling method. Our findings suggest that BreadTube creators are not only keenly aware of the aforementioned debate surrounding a “crisis of masculinity,” but are also eager to participate in it themselves (although not without tension or disagreement). Furthermore, we find that this discussion is driven almost entirely by accounts which could be classified as part of the platform’s “influencer industry”, which indicates the extent to which the political economy of YouTube plays some part in shaping the contours of this debate. Ultimately, we argue that this network of video creators works to articulate a specific left-wing perspective on manhood, which we term BreadTube Masculinities. This articulation of masculinity is distinguished by its empathy for men’s alienation under a capitalist system of production, while simultaneously arguing that men must find sources of identity, meaning, and community-building outside of the individualist, capitalist gender role of “economic provider.”

The failure of the youth from low-privilege backgrounds in obtaining quality private education to become more employable in the competitive job market has coincided with the growth and affordability of the smartphone-Internet in India. Using ethnographic methods, both in-person and online, with 20 young men from low-privileged backgrounds in Kolkata (India), this ongoing research investigates how they access content of the digital industries, mostly on YouTube, to acquire skills for and information about income opportunities against a lack of access to quality institutions. It asks whether and how the outcomes of such Internet use are shaped by their specific life contexts which influence the scope of application of such information. Domesticating the affordable Internet resources, the young men exercise their agency to attempt to fill the deficiencies of formal institutions. This indicates an overcoming of the second digital divide, although not uniformly. In line with the third digital divide, these findings reveal greater obstacles in the efficacy of applying livelihood-related online resources in terms of the nature of livelihoods sought, availability of energy and time, social expectations, and the availability of avenues for finding lesser employment via offline ties. With examples, I aim to argue that the extent of divide (2nd or 3rd) is not uniform for individuals in a population group but varies with uses. This research contributes both to knowledge of digital experiences from the Global South and extends the theories of domestication of digital technology and digital divides to youth in low-privilege settings.

This paper explores how content creators in the Nigerian social media video industry navigate the economic, infrastructural, and cultural logics of digital platforms through practices of reciprocal labour. As is the case in many global contexts, the economic formalization of social media platforms, such as YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok, have enabled the emergence of for-profit social media video production in Nigeria. This paper focuses on the under-studied intersection of platform logics and labour relations in this industry. Drawing on 10 semi-structured interviews with Nigerian content creators, combined with analysis of the domestic trade press, we observe that creators struggle to generate visibility in a highly saturated social media landscape. This visibility imperative is not unique to Nigeria. What sets Nigeria apart, however, is the local political economy of video production, which translates into high production costs, which are offset by orchestrating practices of informally organised reciprocal labour. Nigeria thus provides a relevant perspective to ongoing debates in platform research that seek more regional specificity and seek to decentre the Global North as their point of reference. To heed that call, the specific labour practices we highlight, those of reciprocal labour, reflect the broader informal economies and traditional kinship norms in Nigeria. Exploring this mode of work showcases the intersections among creative labour and cultural dynamics in a given national context vis-à-vis the unifying business models and centralized governance frameworks of platform companies.

Amateur family vlogs on YouTube have become a living testament to the lives of Indian women and their ongoing battles against inequalities in the domestic space and digital space. It requires sharing a carefully curated but intimate representation of their personal lives. Problematising that, this paper primarily discusses how affective and emotional labour interplay in performance as a microcelebrity in family vlogging by Indian women YouTubers. It starts with the question of how women’s affective and emotional labour are exploited to create a commodified self. Drawing from interviews, analysis of select vlogs and audience comments, and participant observation during the vlog recording; the study also explores their motivation for participating in the ‘fame-work’ and how it enhances the ‘visibility’ of women’s domestic work. The work reveals that the primary motivation to engage in these labours comes in the form of fame, acknowledgement of their invisible housework, and creating an identity which facilitates a sense of empowerment.

In this paper, I detail Black femme activists' use of Instagram during the summer of 2020 racial uprisings. I argue that Black femmes' digital affective labor is a meaning-making discursive practice in which Black femmes care for themselves and their communities and produce knowledge about themselves and the issues we care about throughout the multiple publics in our society. I analyzed the Instagram posts of eleven prominent Black femme progressive activist organizations during June 2020 to outline the Black femme digital tactics of resistance that emerged during this period. Using critical discourse analysis, I analyzed this period further to demonstrate that Black femme digital practices and online activism are meaning-making a discursive practice that provides vital life-affirming information and community support while impacting the way mainstream media discussed the Black Lives Matter movement and its supporters throughout the summer of 2020.

In this study, I examine the challenges and strategies of content creators operating within Turkey's digital landscape, particularly focusing on “alternative creators” who represent marginalized identities and advocate for progressive politics amid political precarity and authoritarianism. Through in-depth interviews with content creators, I investigate the complexities of navigating contentious political discourse and advocating for social change within the confines of repressive government policies and platform dynamics. Theoretical frameworks drawn from the platformization of cultural production and the concept of nested precarities inform my analysis, highlighting the intersection of market, industry, platform, and political precarities experienced by influencers in Turkey. I argue that the unique context of Turkey's influencer industry, marked by state oppression and recent crises like the devastating earthquake, adds another layer of complexity to the challenges faced by content creators. Three themes emerged from my analysis: the challenges faced by queer creators navigating Turkey’s digital landscape, the hurdles encountered by vocal women creators advocating for social issues, and the diverse strategies employed by creators to navigate algorithmic challenges and combat shadowbans. Through these themes, I explore the nuanced experiences of alternative creators and highlight their resilience in the face of adversity. Ultimately, this study contributes to our understanding of the intersection between political precarity, platform dynamics, and social change advocacy among content creators. By shedding light on previously overlooked aspects of content creation in digital spaces, I challenge existing scholarly notions and open new avenues of inquiry into the strategies employed by marginalized creators facing oppressive regimes.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018 sparked a global regulatory debate over privacy, exposing gaps in conceptualizations of privacy between users, industry, and policymakers. This study leverages the ensuing parliamentary hearings in the US and the EU in order to examine the heterogeneity of privacy frames among elite actors. Using a validated coding scheme, we systematically analyze 593 interventions by lawmakers and witnesses, capturing privacy-specific attributes such as its vertical and horizontal orientations, proximity of privacy relations, and responsibility for privacy infringement and protection. Our preliminary findings reveal an overall dominance of vertical privacy framing in the hearings, which stands in contrast with earlier findings about horizontal framing among users. We also observe differences in privacy framing between the industry and the lawmakers, and between conservative and liberal parliamentarians. Our study contributes to the literature on privacy conceptualization and framing, highlighting the dimensionalization, the gaps, and the politics of privacy in policy deliberations. We discuss the implications of our findings for the study and activism surrounding privacy as a pivotal democratic issue in surveillance capitalism.

Privacy settings are a critical mechanism for platforms to manage, control, and impact user privacy online. The policies of social media platforms and their technical design—including the choice architecture of privacy settings—"serve as a form of privatized governance directly enacting rights and regulating the flow of information online (DeNardis & Hackl, 2015). Many platforms use a rhetoric of “choice and control,” relying on privacy settings to shoulder the burden of responsibility for user privacy (Horne, 2021). Another challenge to privacy on social media platforms is that there is a wide disparity of settings choices across different platforms, with varying defaults (Horne, 2023). Additionally, the interconnection and the technical importance of privacy settings has a clear and well-established history. This paper examines this history via a historical analysis of Meta’s changes to privacy settings. The analysis focuses on Meta as it is one of the oldest and largest of social media platforms; it also hosts a comprehensive archive of news articles, which tracks critical updates to Meta products. The study seeks to determine what privacy settings changes Meta has made, when the changes were announced, as well as analyze how these changes were framed in news articles.

Digital traces generated by internet users are automatically collected, stored, and analyzed by public and private actors. This dataveillance becomes salient to users through repeated exposure over time to triggers of a sense of dataveillance. This can lead to a range of consequences including democratically concerning responses such as the self-inhibition of legitimate digital communication behavior, known as the chilling effects of dataveillance. Such chilling effects are expected to subtly accumulate over time. Hence, longitudinal in-situ studies are required to capture the temporal dynamics of individuals’ perception of dataveillance and the resulting behavioral changes. Relying on a longitudinal online field experiment with a representative sample of Swiss internet users, this study investigates how chilling effects accumulate over time and aims to capture the temporal dynamics of chilling effects. Preliminary results reveal that the experimental treatment successfully heightened participants' sense of dataveillance over time. Time significantly predicted this increase, aligning with the notion of accumulating chilling effects. Furthermore, the comfort levels of the digital communication behaviors, including information searching, opinion voicing, and information disclosing, were over time lower for the experimental treatment than control condition, supporting the chilling-effects hypothesis. Accumulating chilling effects were found for information disclosing as the experimental treatment and time predicted a decrease in participants’ comfortability level. This article provides an innovative contribution to the growing research on the chilling effects of dataveillance and adds to the empirical understanding of the nature of chilling effects.

This study examines the apparent paradox of hackers engaging in both invading and safeguarding privacy. Drawing on digital materialism, which posits that code holds a material presence and cultural significance beyond its functional role, the research aims to illuminate the hackers' ethical dilemmas embedded in privacy code. To gain insight into the cultural logic behind this seeming contrast, we conducted qualitative content and code analyses on both malicious and non-malicious code projects from the open-source platform GitHub. We have narrowed down a list of 2500 hackers to 52 who own both malicious and non-malicious projects, with a reference to privacy. We found that these hackers justify their malicious projects as educational tools, often cautioning other users against illegal use. The hackers' logic asserts that those possessing private information are responsible for its protection, be it the end-user or the software owner managing the information post-collection. This logic is translated into code using two privacy approaches: a formal privacy-by-policy and a technically-oriented privacy-by-design. The hackers' polar approach to privacy materializes both in violating privacy when crafting breaching code and in writing code that expertly protects it. From this individualized, privatized standpoint, this duality makes perfect sense.

The goal of this paper-in-progress is to build upon the emerging interdisciplinary literature on AI supply chains and combine it with an analytical framework and insights gleaned from the extant governance literature on supply chain regulation more generally. We seek to: (a) better understand the novel technical challenges that face AI supply chains from a regulatory perspective, establishing similarities and differences between these new and complex socio-technical 'stacks' in contrast to more widely studied traditional products; (b) survey the political and legal literatures on supply chain governance to pull out some key arguments and hypotheses that may be applicable for the present and future of AI regulation efforts; and (c) offer few brief case studies that explore how emblematic regulatory efforts --- such as certification schemes (Matus and Veale, 2022), standardization efforts (Mueller et al., 2009), norm-building initatives (Boersma, 2018) disclosure requirements (Turner, 2016; Weihrauch et al., 2023), and auditing frameworks (LeBaron et al., 2017) --- have under certain economic and institutional conditions alternatively succeeded and/or fallen short of the mark. In doing so, we emphasise how the arrangement of algorithmic supply chains by leading actors within them can be constructed specifically to make these efforts fail or flop, nonsensically, by making intervention points seem infeasible, trade-offs seem toxic, or relations practically inscrutable.

In 2023, The United States government concluded a public consultation “to examine the copyright law and policy issues raised by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, including the scope of copyright in works generated using AI tools and the use of copyrighted materials in AI training.” The consultation received 10,371 submissions from the public and most large language firms. Drawing on large-scale controversy analysis, we analyze these submissions through topic modelling and named-entity recognition to map key positions as they relate directly or indirectly to matters of the regulation of the commons. Preliminary analysis finds that regulatory submissions that foreclose, or freeze out, the radical challenge of genAI to the commons by treating the governance issue as a copyright question. Large AI firms either argue their efforts amount to fair use, constituting a free-for-all approach to the commons or for cartel like models where elite firms coordinate their privileged access to common-pool resources. Conversely, authors and rights-holders advocated for a transactional commons – akin to a global blockchain – built on contracts and licensing. Our analysis of a key global corpus of genAI governance debates becomes the empirical basis for our emphasis on the commons. Collectively, we argue these efforts collaborate to freeze out the controversiality of genAI in relation to the commons, letting copyright foreclose the more radical challenge of genAI to the imagination and future of the commons.

Scholars and policymakers have emphasised the urgent need for responsible governance, development, and use of AI. In China, AI adoption permeates sectors from manufacturing and service to medical care and entertainment. The Chinese national government is leveraging AI to drive economic and social advancement, and has opened up its ambition to become a global AI superpower by 2030. China is also making its way to become one of the key governments (e.g., the EU, the US, and the UK) that contributes to the development of international AI standards (Schmitt, 2022). Since China stipulated a national AI action implementation plan in 2016, several recent studies (Cheng and Zeng, 2023; Li and Yang, 2021; Roberts et al., 2023; Roberts et al., 2021; Zeng, 2020) have started reflecting on the status of governance within Chinese contexts. The main framework for examination focuses on AI-related ethical frameworks and authoritarian governance in China. However, given the dynamic and expansive nature of AI policymaking, existing studies tend to adopt a fairly narrow definition of what constitutes AI policy. This overlooks the diversity of policy instruments and their interplay with industrial policies, industry (self-)regulations, and the role of AI users. Therefore, our project aims to systematically map the evolution of AI policymaking in China as the necessary first step to understand the emerging actors, policy patterns, and development paths in China’s approach to AI governance.

AI for Social Good (AI4SG) initiatives have emerged in various sectors. However, AI's non-neutral nature challenges claims that the “good” can simply be inferred by association with broad goals such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The lack of a clear definition of "the good” or what it entails in practice risks making AI4SG an empty signifier. This ambiguity allows unchecked interventions, undermining societal efforts to align future AI developments with public good. In this article, we adopt a socially situated public good framework from the social studies of quantum technologies proposed by Roberson et al (2021) and use insights from critical AI scholarship to tailor this framework to AI4SG initiatives. Analysing AI4SG initiatives, and building upon existing critical literature, we scrutinize these initiatives with regards to the framings of the research problems, the wider social and institutional context in which AI initiatives are imagined to be applied and used, as well as the wider network of scientists, stakeholders and publics involved in their co-production. We argue that much of the AI4SG literature abstracts AI from social and contextual realities, making it difficult to clarify the ways in which they might in fact have an impact in the world. Outlining our first iteration, we argue that co-creating this framework demands iterative refinement and ongoing dialogue with diverse stakeholders, especially in the Global South.

This paper explores playful engagement with algorithmic systems among members of the North Atlantic Fella Organisation (NAFO). NAFO are an international social movement that emerged on Twitter in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. We use a combination of textual analysis and semi-structured scroll-back interviews, to understand how NAFO members make sense of the algorithmic environment of Twitter, and how their understanding of algorithms affects their daily participation in a social movement. We examine the community’s practices, or allegorithms, through the prism of playful activism.

Our findings reveal that NAFO understand Twitter’s algorithm as both an instrumental and an antagonistic entity. Their self-professed status as an algorithmic actor reclaims power in a fragmented and increasingly hostile environment of Twitter. Instead of seeing algorithms as adversarial or omnipotent, NAFO members engage in playful vernacular practices to reclaim their agency over the information ecosystem.

NAFO do not succeed in fully understanding or rewriting the “rules of the game”, but achieve their objective of propagating civic ideas to ever-increasing international audiences. With the growing interest in harms that arise from online humour and memes, our paper highlights a contrasting and complementary aspect of online humour - the civic nature of playful practices in digitally mediated collectives.

This paper tackles the under-explored issue of users’ perception of uncertainty surrounding the algorithmic systems of social media platforms. Drawing on 93 in-depth interviews with ordinary users, our study makes two primary arguments.

First, that perceptions of uncertainty, instead of being resolved by “imaginaries” and “folk theories”, may evolve into a distinct form of conspiratorial epistemology. Some interviewees’ ideas resembled typical conspiracy theories, replete with intricate plots and numerous characters -- such as that platforms colluded with politicians to meticulously manipulate the algorithmic amplification of certain contents. Others exhibited vaguer conspiratorial sentiments, often stemming from a sense of unease about the exact goals of platforms’ constant monitoring.

Second, these conspiratorial viewpoints seem to be associated with the materiality of social media algorithms. Many of the ideas interviewees expressed could be linked to evidence generated by the algorithmic systems themselves, such as the types of posts and ideologies seemingly privileged by platforms, or the oddly precise targeting of interviewees with messages by advertisers, the police, or governmental bodies. On this view, algorithmic systems’ materiality is seen as occupying a paradoxical position of conspicuous invisibility. That is, in continuously generating apparent evidence of their existence without ever disclosing the rationale behind these processes, algorithms intensified suspicions about their true nature.

The paper suggests novel ways in which trust in platforms can be undermined by their perceived association with broader structures of power. Regardless of their accuracy, these ideas may shape users’ attitudes towards tech organisations, deserving more attention from researchers and policymakers.

The discourse on women's online entrepreneurship predominantly centres on social media influencers, neglecting a significant population of self-employed women entrepreneurs who leverage social media for business without fitting the influencer mould. This study addresses this gap by examining how self-employed women in the UK attempt to make sense of social media algorithms to obtain visibility and generate income.

Drawing on in-depth interviews with 28 self-employed women across various sectors, this research uncovers a prevailing reliance on intuition and instinct, termed as "vibes," in algorithmic sense-making. Amidst the opacity and complexity of algorithms, these women prioritize the "feeling" of platforms, algorithms, and their entrepreneurial selves over strategic research or algorithmic theories.

Rather than investing heavily, or indeed at all, in ‘playing the visibility game’ (Cotter 2019), self-employed women often deprioritise algorithmic sense-making due to competing work responsibilities. For them, social media updates are but one aspect of their business operations. Rather than invest time into practices such as visibility engineering (Cotter 2019), self-employed women in a variety of roles and industries rely on vibes to guide their social media practices, often choosing to ignore algorithms altogether.

This research underscores the importance of recognising and understanding the diverse approaches to algorithmic sense-making among self-employed women. By shedding light on their experiences and perspectives, this study enriches current understandings of online entrepreneurial pursuits and highlights the need for more inclusive research in the field of digital entrepreneurship.

Algorithms provide individuals insight on possible selves to explore and feedback on performances of the self. Prior scholarship examining how the information audiences are exposed to leads to either formation or shifts in their identity. Using TikTok as an example, Cotter et al. (2022) proposed algorithmic conspirituality, the notion that social media content that is ‘meant for you’ is served up to you at exactly the time you need it. Our work explored how this genre of content might shape identity work on TikTok. To examine this, we conducted focus groups and interviews with TikTok users who were familiar with content framed as meant for them on the platform. Our findings outline three major themes - reinforcing identities, possible selves, and self-reflection - and discusses their connection to identity work based on content that is curated or meant for them.

Across the social sciences and humanities, scholars have long approached valuation as a social process, and often, a social struggle. How do people arrive at consensus on the worth of things that are inherently unstable, from art worlds to advertising and financial industries? Sociologists have shown valuation struggles rooted in social logics of fields and markets (Bourdieu 1993), while media scholars have attended to the architectures of industries and political economies (e.g., Meehan 2012). These macro structures orient how people “makes sense” of and reconcile economic and cultural value, or as the sociologist Talcott Parsons famously called them, value and values (Beckert and Aspers 2011).

This paper advances the study of valuation as a social struggle in the age of platforms. How do platforms change notions of value, of what is valuable, and how we create value? In so doing, how do platforms transform existing logics of markets, fields, and industries? Platforms have introduced some of the most significant transformations in economies of value; they are new actors shaping how assets emerge, such as in FinTech and social media economies. They shape how goods are priced, such as via rankings and metrics that dominate considerations of value, even in art worlds (Christin and Lewis 2021; Levina and Arriaga 2014; Vallas and Schor 2020). They shift how goods circulate in exchange, now that actors have mediated exchanges across far distances without ever seeing each other face to face.

This panel thus bridges scholarship on valuation and platformization, to ask: how do platforms shape valuation struggles over the social worth of goods? We gather as a group of scholars across the disciplines of media, information, and sociology with a range of case studies of online social worth struggles, from cultural goods (the performing art of magic, and rare plant collections) to financial ones (social media advertising and financial services). Our range of cases is balanced by our variety in method and scale: we use various qualitative methods including ethnographies and interviews to capture micro interactions, such as how people negotiate and contest the value of art, to institutional analyses at the macro-level, such as how institutions “see” value in global audiences.

The first three papers are related to each other in terms of their broader interest in how the proliferation of platforms and digital technologies transform the existing sectors or fields. First two papers focus similarly on how the penetration of platforms into the production and exchange of cultural goods re-shapes the operation of cultural fields. Based on interviews with magicians and participant observation in the magician community in the USA, sociologists [Paper 1] shows how social media platforms are remaking the rules of art, based on an in-depth study of magicians who are re-imagining “what counts” as magic when it is presented online. With a digital ethnographic study on rare plant collectors, the sociologist presenting [Paper2] identifies a shift in norms of valuation from offline to online exchange of cultural goods. It documents how the internet and social media platforms can enable new and creative forms of exchange dependent on relationships between rare plant collectors and insider knowledge of community members. Studying financial technology (a.k.a. fintech) platforms, communications scholar [Paper 3] discusses how the proliferation of platforms re-shape the markets for financial services. It examines the ways in which such credit scoring and lending platforms build the logics of attention-getting visibility and self-promotion into the infrastructures and design of their products and services, exerting overt forms of behavioral discipline on users.

Paper 4 and Paper 5 extend the arguments raised in the first three papers, showing platforms can engender new forms of production and exchange of cultural goods such as social media content. Using a qualitative content analysis of YouTube videos, communication scholars [Paper 4] discuss how social media platforms, such as YouTube, navigate between content creators and advertisers who fund the platform economy. Their paper documents various consequences of advertiser-dependence of social media platforms for content production and monetization as well. Drawing on the interviews with content creators in Chile, communication scholars [Paper 5] bring a different angle to the content production process, showing how creators value the labor of content creation and navigate their parallel work lives.

The first and third papers offer important insights into how increasing impact of platforms reinforces the existing social inequalities and hierarchies as well. For instance, Paper 1 explains how symbolic hierarchies sustain in the magic community despite the increasing use of social media in doing and sharing magic tricks. Paper 3 provides insights into how fintech platforms contribute to the already existing economic inequalities as well as to the racist, colonial patterns of expropriation and exploitation.

Our relationship with technology is often transactional, extractive, and exploitative, and this is especially true for marginalised users. On this roundtable we question our position as co-producers – those who make with technologies – as opposed to as fungible, exploited in the production of technology. In our discussion of large language models (LLMs), we challenge the deracination of A.I. and question its ability to authentically reproduce—and co-produce—Black vernacular styles as both cause for concern and a site of possibility. We think through the making of home(pages) in our engagement with the internet, and the production of nostalgia and ephemera as acts of refusal. We consider technology and/as care, through clinical fixations with fixing errant bodyminds through the use of high-capacity digital tools, and counterdiagnostic impulses wherein crip, BIPOC, and trans users refashion what it means to have a wayward body in the age of social media and biocertification. Refusal is an especially precious space of possibility, particularly for those who have historically not been given the option to say no. People of color and disabled people have long navigated this space between possibility and refusal of the newest technologies in ways that can empower and energize our awareness of the potential technoskepticism can offer.

Finally, we reconfigure even the process of making academic knowledge, from writing as an individual towards a collective practice. Technoskepticism is a topical and timely multi-authored 50,000 word monograph written by an intergenerational group of 14 key researchers and artists (David Adelman, André Brock, Aaron Dial, Stephanie Dinkins, Rayvon Fouché, Huan He, Jeff Nagy, Lisa Nakamura, Catherine Knight Steele, Rianna Walcott, Kevin Winstead, Josie Williams, Remi Yergeau, and Lida Zeitlin-Wu) who comprise the DISCO (Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, and Optimism) Network, a Mellon-funded research group dedicated to analyzing race, gender, disability, and technology.

This panel focuses on the relationship of emerging creator economies to conditions of precarity, as they have come to develop in several distinct yet partially overlapping social, historical, and geographical contexts, including: Dalit mobile street performances in Haryana, India; YouTube street interview videos recorded in China, Japan and South Korea; the digital circulation of ethnonationalist themes and tropes surrounding the 2024 parliamentary elections in Uttarakhand, India; the resurgence of New Age beliefs and practices on CrystalTok; and, the rise of motivational speakers as political intermediaries in rural areas of neoliberal India. Across these various contexts, emerging creator economies, and the media practices and technologies which constitute them, appear as often attached to various contextually situated promises—of social mobility; political empowerment; cultural recognition; fame and wealth; or healing and relief from systemic forms of harm. This panel considers how various individuals, social groups, and organizations have, through participation in and strategic engagement with emerging creator economies, sought to achieve at least one (and in some cases, multiple) of the above listed goals and objectives. Utilizing a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches that collectively prioritize ambivalence and contextual nuance over sweeping generalizations, each of these five papers in some way balances an interest in the unique social and political potentials that emerging creator economies have helped (or might help) to realize, in a given context, with a critical awareness of the systemic forms of inequality, political disempowerment, and social and psychological immiseration that creator economies have both contributed to and intensified.

Children’s finances are increasingly datafied through the emergence and development of applications for managing chores, saving, and spending. These finance apps incorporate features for both parents and children, enabling the setting and tracking of chores, the payment of allowances or pocket money, as well as supporting and managing children’s saving and spending habits.

The paper draws on and contributes to children’s financial socialisation and digital platform studies. This paper offers a novel contribution to these fields, applying the concept of datafication to children’s financial lives through a feature analysis of children’s finance apps. The feature analysis reviews information in Appstore descriptions, company websites, and product reviews to identify and map the range of features spread across these apps.

Our analysis considers three emergent themes in which these apps are significantly impacting children’s financial lives: management of child household labour; mediation of children’s financial agency; and datafication of children’s economic participation.

We argue that the data produced by child finance apps simultaneously enables increased agency and control of children’s financial lives by initiating a lifelong digital trace.

This paper uses family privacy theory and the dataveillance literature as lenses through which to explore state use of health technologies in the care of unwell children, and the contribution of such technologies to children’s datafication.

Family privacy is an important ideology which informs legal and political understandings of the family, and influences laws governing the family’s relationship with state and society. Respect for family privacy is commonly understood to entail state non-intervention in ordinary family life. Increasingly, however, scholars recognise that family privacy may be more widely understand to entail family autonomy or decision-making and can be understood to afford parental control over how family information, particularly children’s information, is used.

This paper draws upon responses to freedom of information requests received from Integrated Care Boards and Trusts across England as well as information on the NHS Transformation Directorate’s website. This research confirms that a range of telehealth technologies are now being used to support children's health care including virtual wards, apps, wearables and other medical devices which monitor patients’ vital signs. Patients and their parents are, however, rarely told by the NHS how these technologies use patient data. This paper uses the UK General Data Protection Regulation as a framework for exploring what transparent, lawful and fair use of children’s data entails in the context of digitised healthcare. It argues that the NHS could do more to support parents and children to understand these technologies and the implications for children’s privacy.

Other-tracking apps (Gabriels, 2016), have increasingly gained popularity among parents (Burnell et al. 2023, Mavova et al. 2023), however, most of the empirical studies on the topic so far have focused on exploring the use of tracking technologies within families where children are still minors.

A qualitative interview study in families where parents use tracking technologies to track their young adults (18-26 year olds) (n=10) was conducted for exploring both parents' and children's views and experiences on the topic. Furthermore, inspired by the communication privacy management theory (Petronio 2002) we aimed to capture the potential role such tracking may have on the sense of privacy and parent–child relations.

Findings suggest that the use of tracking technologies is rationalized and supported both by parents and their adult children as a practice making caring dataveillance (Lupton, 2020) possible. On several occasions it was the adult children who had initiated such intimate surveillance as they considered tracking to be less intrusive and annoying than constant phone calls and messages from parents. For many, tracking technologies were seen as convenience tools, enabling to provide instant information about the whereabouts of family members and therefore often used for planning family logistics, or organizing day-to-day errands (e.g. cooking). Even though parents sometimes used the devices as disciplinary technologies (e.g. reminding the child of the need to wake up and to attend their lecture), such intrusions were welcomed by young adults. Thus, our analysis suggests that such caring dataveillance could act as a trigger for irresponsibility.

The family genealogy industry has seen exponential growth in recent years, in large part due to the rise of direct-to-consumer DNA testing platforms. To some extent, ancestry-oriented DNA platforms function like other social media networks, connecting users in intimate publics. Yet they differ in that rather than ordering users by social relationships such as friendship, individuals are displayed according to how many centimorgans they share. In recent years, digital researchers have extended the sociological concept of ‘family display’ to consider digital displays of family. Yet limited work has considered how DNA platforms may constitute digital displays of family or how DNA data shape the bio-digital identities for affected communities who have limited avenues to familial information. In this presentation, I draw on data from the first empirical study to capture the Australian direct-to-consumer DNA users’ experiences, combining accounts from genealogy enthusiasts with accounts from those affected by adoption and donor conception. Reflexive thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews (n=23) derived two key themes: (1) DNA displays of family - how users are connected and ordered on the DNA platform, and (2) Defining the bio-digital self - how identity is shaped by DNA data. This work firstly contributes to understanding digital displays of family, specifically how DNA platforms shape understandings and practices of family. Secondly, this work provides insights into how DNA data (like other biometric data) shape individual identities in complex ways.

Cloud providers, by creating and owning massive computing assets, produce new internet infrastructure. Large-scale data centres that aggregate hardware resources are an important element shaping the expansion of platform economies. The impact of this configuration of hardware on the dynamics of software development is still unclear. There is growing scholarship on data centres, however the aggregation of a highly scalable hardware system has a profound impact on industry dynamics. Cloud computing lowers the upfront cost of using and owning computing systems. The wide-ranging impact of platforms is explained at least in part by cloud infrastructure: the scalable provisioning of computing resources via the internet. I identify virtualized hardware, modularity, resource sharing, and externalisation as generative of a new internet-based infrastructure. I show these coalesce to form a new industry dynamic, with hardware centralisation on the one hand and decentralisation of cloud users and complement developers on the other. Scholarship in this area is beginning to examine the relations between dominant technology corporations and their networks of users and third-party companies. I contribute to this by examining changing organizational and market dynamics introduced by cloud computing. The findings and analysis are derived from two related studies of changing industrial practices. I focus on the anatomy of the infrastructure and how it activates a new set of relations between start-ups, developers, entrepreneurs, and investors. What is the techno-organisational structure of cloud computing? In answering this, the presentation will offer a view into cloud ecosystems from an industry level and organisational level.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the move from global to local, in relation to FLOSS software projects and their implementation in local communities. The need stems from a gradual ecological collapse which brings about unforeseeable consequences to human civilization and infrastructures. By investigating the process of global development to local infrastructure, more resilient and localized communication solutions can be implemented.

Findings

This paper aims to find the challenges in moving from global software development to a local implementation of open source infrastructure by mapping out the issues offline-first protocols face in reaching a stage of local implementation of their development and the issues communities face in implementing their own communication infrastructures. These findings can support the steps of moving from global software development projects to locally implemented infrastructures.

Method

The method is based on semi-structured interviews with four communities and four protocols with a minimum of 2 interviews with each project and community. At the end of the project an online workshop is hosted enabling collective reflection for the communities and projects, and potential knowledge sharing.

Originality

The research of moving from global to local is extensively explored through the scaling and commercialization of software. By flipping the approach around and looking at global software developments implementation in local communities this paper delves into a relatively unexplored, and necessary, area of research. The research also supports the active implementation of FLOSS projects for real communities striving towards data-sovereignty and local infrastructures.

Cloud gaming is a mode of content provision whereby games are processed on remote servers, allowing players to “stream” games instead of downloading or playing them locally. We analyze Google’s failed cloud gaming service Stadia which, despite high momentum in the industry at the time of its release in 2019, was unceremoniously shut down in 2023. To discover who (or what) killed Stadia, we conducted a thematic analysis of around 200 documents revealing the points of view of the main actors involved in the case: gamers, third-party game developers, and Google’s Stadia team. Preliminary results reveal that Google failed on both components of its hybrid nature. As a platform, it failed to incentivize game studios to develop or distribute high-quality and exclusive games for Stadia. Such a catalog necessarily failed to attract a substantial number of gamers. As an infrastructure, it failed to leverage Google’s Cloud network to tackle the fundamental challenge of cloud gaming i.e., to bypass last-mile connectivity issues to deliver dynamic content. With this paper, we take stock of the rising importance of cloud gaming as a key topic in game studies. We also contribute to the scholarship on the infrastructural power of platform companies by emphasizing the importance of community engagement, market dynamics, and the materiality of infrastructure in the success—and failure—of tech giants.

The humanitarian sector is known for its reliance on technological pilots as part of the digitisation and datafication of aid operations. Drawing on ten years of research in the aid sector, this paper outlines a new type of technological experimentation which I term surreptitious experimentation. This type of experimentation is possible as digital technologies and practices become enmeshed with the infrastructures of aid. This process of infrastructuring allows for a continuous flow of experimentation, which is not named as such, and which operates in the infrastructural background, and therefore remains hidden – yet in plain sight. Surreptitious experiments take place outside the laboratory, without clear boundaries, meaningful consent or processes of accountability. In so doing, surreptitious experiments compound the power asymmetries of humanitarianism with significant risks and harms for some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

Data scraping practices have recently come under scrutiny, as datasets scraped from the web’s social spaces are the basis of new generative AI tools like Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. These practices of scrapers and crawlers are based on the conception of the internet as a mountain of data that’s sitting, waiting, available to be acted upon, extracted and put to use. In this paper, we examine the robots.txt exclusion protocol which has been used to govern the behavior of crawlers and is often taken as a proxy for consent in widespread data scraping and web archiving. By addressing the underlying assumptions of the protocol, we aim to counter a recent narrative that “the basic social contract of the web is falling apart” (Pierce, 2024), and instead argue that data extractive infrastructures have always been at work over the past 30 years of the web. Positioning this work within the field of critical data studies, we aim to find new ways for web archives and modes of collection to become unbound from the “capitalist logics of data extraction” upon which they’re currently built (Theilen et al., 2021).

As human cognitive capacity of comprehension, interpretation, learning, and problem solving has been put to work to annotate and train the datasets for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models, it is imperative, from the management perspective, to standardize subjective interpretations of data and align workers’ understanding of data with the clients’ interests and values. The tendency to treat the data worker’s mind as a contested terrain of labor control raises important questions for labor politics and critical data studies.

The paper delves into the management of interpretative labor in the AI data production industry, with a specific focus on the impact of organizational and market dynamics. Taking AI data production industry in China as a case study, in this paper, I intend to elucidate the contradictions in managing the cognitive and interpretative labor, examine the contributing factors to these managerial contradictions, and attend to worker’s cognitive tactics as means of negotiations and resistance.

This study examines data frictions – a combination of sociotechnical circumstances involving the consumption of energy, time, and resources that shape the mobility of data – embedded in digital platforms APIs and how data frictions shape the connections between various API-based data practices. By conducting a document analysis of Twitter/X APIs’ historical documentation and changelogs, this study articulates a multi-layered understanding of data frictions, namely, this study identifies a multiple-layered understanding of data frictions, including the material layer, technical layer, and discursive layer, which respectively correspond to the elements of data practice, namely materials, competencies, and meanings. Beyond the descriptive understanding of data friction, this study argues that data frictions shape the material element of data practice as limited and potentially fractured so that the data practice environment of third-party developers is limited to the technical environment recommended by APIs. This also makes it possible for practitioners with different identities, such as programmers, software developers, business analysts, and academic researchers, to share and discuss codes on open-source platforms like GitHub. With practitioners applying APIs in different fields, the platform extends this meaning to the broader social web, serving as one of the strategies of platformization, contributing to digital platforms’ programmability and ongoing infrastructuralization.

The urgency of enhancing community resilience in the face of escalating disasters necessitates a shift in disaster preparedness strategies. This paper presents a novel approach developed in collaboration with the Australian Red Cross, focusing on community-centred data practices for disaster resilience. Recognising the limitations of traditional digital humanitarianism, which largely relied on crowdsourcing and social platform data, our project shifts the paradigm towards empowering communities with data capabilities. We developed a Community Resource Mapping Pipeline, and a prototype platform to map community resources and strengths, emphasising community-led processes and local data capability development to improve local disaster preparedness and response. Our organisational participatory approach involved workshops with stakeholders to co-shape research questions and platform design within a human-centred framework. Our prototype demonstrates the potential of community-led data capability building in enhancing disaster preparedness, underscoring the importance of involving communities in both data collection and decision-making.

SVOD platforms’ increasing pan-Europe presence is forcing the existing actors in European motion picture industry to calibrate their positions and redefine assumed roles. These platforms impose fierce competitions over contents as well as the key resources of production, such as labour. Their effects are reflected not only in competitive market offerings, but also upcoming structural changes in the industry. The structural arrangements in European motion picture industry were organized around what I term a communal production culture. The disruptive effect of SVOD platforms is most prominent in its introduction and successful translation of market-driven logic and private production culture. The interactions between these two distinctive logics and cultures had generated a series of conflicts. This paper sets out to explore how SVOD platforms obtained central positions and institutionalised various novel logic and practices, and their impacts on the industry structure, for instance, remediation of creative labour and financing model. These changes can generate substantial implications for European contents and cultural heritage. The study draws on archival data issued by European Commission and affiliated policymaking organisations, media sources, and SVOD firms, as well as semi-structured interviews with diverse stakeholders. The empirics were analysed thematically with an institutional framework combining institutional work and translation model to address the ongoing interplay between SVOD platforms and European motion picture industry.

Prepping for the apocalypse. Fighting for eternal life. Building separatist compounds for like-minded people. Reproducing to fill the world with chosen ones. Manifestos to recruit believers. All these practices are age-old characteristics of religious zealots and sound like the makings of a promising cult docuseries. And yet, they are also increasingly common obsessions of leaders of the American tech industry. From building luxury bunkers to hoping cryonic freezing could make resurrection possible, many billionaire and multi-millionaire founders, engineers, and VCs are investing time, money, and attention into speculative pursuits that are often considered the realm of religious paranoia. Through a conjunctural analysis (Hall, 1978), this research gathers evidence of four key religiously coded practices that are coursing through the Silicon Valley elite and examines the guiding ideologies behind them. By connecting the techno-solutionist practices of today’s tech elite to questions that have historically been explored via religious interventions, I hope to decenter appeals to rationality and expose the underlying values and emotions that drive these decisions. Additionally, this framework requires taking these practices seriously as symptomatic of an underlying belief system—rather than just the quirks of people with too much money on their hands. This research will unpack three core focuses: separatist communities, conquering death, and apocalypse prep.

Questions of media ownership have taken on renewed urgency in recent years, as media workers contend with ongoing consolidation, platformization, and precarity in their work. It is widely agreed that ownership structures matter for media industries and labor, but less is known about why and how. This paper addresses those questions by examining the case study of Defector Media: an online media company whose editorial workers experienced multiple ownership changes in a condensed period – from an individual entrepreneur to a media conglomerate to a private equity firm – before its staff quit en masse and launched Defector as an entirely worker-owned multimedia cooperative in 2020. Drawing on 15 in-depth interviews with Defector staffers (representing 75% of total staff), in addition to a textual analysis of press coverage and company materials, I examine (1) how different ownership structures shaped the editorial labor process at Defector, and (2) how staffers experienced the transition from corporate ownership to worker-ownership. The paper finds that the transition to worker-ownership model forced Defector staffers to critically reassess three fundamental aspects of journalistic work: internalized productivity expectations, the “wall” between business and editorial, and the purpose of revenue and growth. By examining a case where media workers have, in the words of one interviewee, “no suits” to answer to or push back against, the paper sheds new light on the influence of ownership structures on digital media production.

Originating as supplementary firms that operate in and around YouTube’s advertising infrastructure, Multichannel Networks (MCNs) have become a renewed form of cultural intermediaries shaping platform-based cultural production (Lobato 2016; Craig and Cunningham 2019). The emergence of MCNs represents “an opportunity to revisit some elements of the theory base around intermediaries and update it for the platform economy” (Lobato 2016, 350). To hold with this appeal, this research investigates MCNs’ operations in the context of China’s e-commerce livestreaming industry and rethinks its position within the complicated social commerce landscape based on a three-month participatory observation (from December 2021 to March 2022) taken place in an MCN organization (pseudonymised as W company) in Guangzhou, China. For providing a more grounded analysis, 15 in-depth interviews with media professionals working in MCNs (within and outside W company) or working in the e-commerce livestreaming sector as content creator, advertiser, or manufacturer were also included. I employ the concepts of “trade stories” (Caldwell, 2008) and “industry lore” (Havens, 2014) to describe MCNs professionals’ meaning-making practices when navigating a complex network of actors including platforms, livestreamers, brands and retailers. Whilst MCNs are important “platform complementors” (Poell, Nieborg and Duffy 2022, 11) fulfilling an intermediary role in compliance with platforms’ commercial logics, practitioners also struggle to keep up with the changing business models. The deeply integrated components between cultural production and marketing activities in MCNs’ work are supported and determined by the digital platforms they operate around, making the MCNs’ intermediary roles limited, contingent, and oftentimes failing.

In the last twenty years, social media are increasingly relying on recommendation features to increase user engagement and maintain their business logic. Platforms have transitioned from a model where users could explicitly choose content sources, to one based on their inferred algorithmic identities. Users’ agency over their media diets is shaped differently in this new social media paradigm. Platforms such as TikTok, where algorithmic distribution of content is the standard, afford content curation in new avenues.

We build upon previous research on how the TikTok app’s interface design, as a technical artifact, aims to shape consumptive content curation practices at varying degrees of insistence. In this article, we seek to understand how and under what circumstances TikTok affords certain consumptive curation practices to users interested in political and social issues. In other words, how specific users interact with the app’s interface within their social context, focusing on how they adapt their consumptive curation practices to obtain political and social issues content.

The role of digital media platforms as societal actors has been increasingly brought to the fore in recent years. We have also grown to understand how platforms foster actors and media formats not motivated by liberal and democratic norms. Critical scholarship has pointed out the role of platforms in amplifying extreme content and misinformation, allowing for the manipulation of political processes and communication, and intervening in the processes of political communication more broadly. In this study, we focus on the discursive strategies adopted by the platforms to publicize and justify their actions related to electoral and political communication on their services. We ask, how do platform companies articulate elections as a context through which they discursively construct their role and legitimacy as major actors in society? Using a large dataset of corporate blogs from ten platform companies (N=27,616, n=413, years 2006-2022) we show a shift from an opportunity-focused discourse that promotes participation, digital democracy, and politician-citizen interaction to a more defensive discourse stressing companies’ responsible attitude to elections, as evidenced by their transparency efforts, advertising control, fact-checking initiatives, and strategic partnerships. Our findings demonstrate an institutionalization of discourses among the platform companies and highlight their reactive response strategies from feature development to corporate legitimation strategies. The platforms strategically mobilize the empowering participation-focused discourses typically used to describe social media to rebuild their legitimacy and position them as proactive agents in society.

Political parties have by now embraced social media platforms as valuable tools for election campaigns. Their success in reaching their constituents, however, strongly varies, depending in parts on how well they adapt their communication strategies to the affordances of the respective platform. This adaptation is particularly important for elections below the national level where parties and politicians usually have less resources (whether personnel or money for targeted ads) available to them. While a lot of research has already looked into parties’ efforts (and their effects) on the more “traditional” social media platforms such as X/Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, this paper will explore the still under researched platform TikTok and how it is utilized (and with what success) by German parties during the Bavarian state elections in 2023.

The 2022 Brazilian presidential elections and subsequent events highlight a significant period of political polarization and misinformation, particularly on social media platforms like Facebook. This study investigates the dynamics of misinformation campaigns on Facebook in the context of Brazil's political shifts, focusing on the period from the 2022 elections to the aftermath of the attempted coup on January 8, 2023. Utilizing a mixed methods approach and an innovative news alert system, we analyzed three months of links shared in a coordinated fashion leading up to the first anniversary of the attempted coup.

Our findings reveal a bipartisan battlefield of political discourse, with a scenario characterized by divergence in accounts’ political alignment. We, in fact, identified two primary networks of political Facebook accounts: one supporting former President Jair Bolsonaro and another backing President Lula. Interestingly, we observed Lula supporters repeatedly share content criticizing or mocking Bolsonaro, his family members, and his supporters within pro-Bolsonaro groups. Moreover, these posts often receive a substantial number of comments and minor reactions and shares.

Future research will expand on these findings by examining a year's worth of Facebook posts from these networks to explore changes in topics and strategies over time.

The presentation will thus discuss the study's advancement outcomes in-depth, contributing to understanding how Brazilian political factions’ supporters utilize social media to influence public opinion and the implications for democracy in the digital age.

On social media, visibility is thought of as both a strategic game (Cotter, 2018) and a form of labor (Duffy and Hund, 2015) that individuals must grapple with to achieve success through attention and metrics. But as social media shift from networked to refracted spaces dominated by ephemerality, private groups, and locked platforms (Abidin, 2021), negotiating visibility becomes complicated. Additionally, platforms like Patreon, Substack, Discord, and Bindery provide online actors alternatives to monetize their work and create private spaces to cultivate meaningful relationships with smaller audiences. By providing audiences with paid, tiered options to buy into more content and gain additional access to the creator and a community of fellow subscribers, the proliferation of these platforms demonstrates how lower visibility may lead to greater intimacy and more consistent revenue for creators.

For this fishbowl, we conceive of engagement in these spaces as low-visibility social media practices and bring together scholars from communication, internet studies, and creator studies. Drawing on our experience of studying creators and audiences in various contexts, including Asian women creators, freelance journalists, and transnational social media audiences, we consider the following: How refracted publics and online spaces challenge the idea that visibility is always desirable; the ethics of studying private social media; the inverse relationship between visibility and intimacy for creators and audiences; and the enhanced commodification of intimacy. While Internet users of color have long engaged in deliberate visibility work (Steele, 2018), the proliferation of these practices within refracted publics compels a reconsideration of the logics of visibility labor, especially in relation to advertisers’ interests, algorithmic feeds, and other recommendation systems embraced by powerful social media platforms. A fishbowl allows us to invite interdisciplinary audience participation on these topics, with initial participant provocations by Arturo Arriagada, Jeehyun Jenny Lee, Jessica Maddox, Pranav Malhotra, and Colten Meisner.

Health communication researchers often rely on public health messaging to understand what government agencies wish to communicate in times of crisis. This research article positions deletion as a crisis communication deserving of further study and leverages the power of public records requests across 50 U.S. state-level agencies (SLAs) to typologize what prompts the erasure of posts on official government-managed social media platforms, such as Twitter. By filing U.S. Freedom of Information (FOI) requests with SLAs, it becomes possible to study the communicative struggles that unfold, as government officials scramble to negotiate, determine, and debate what types of government information are appropriate for publication (and subsequent worthy of deletion) on official Twitter accounts. By bringing health communication as a field in conversation with the granular specifics of state-level memory governance, this article also offers a method for studying the communication practices of democratic institutions on corporate social media platforms that center public-sector data infrastructure.

Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter has resurfaced concerns that researchers may not have reliable and affordable access to digital data, as many platform companies have eliminated free access to their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) or enacted policies that require them to expunge all data acquired under previous agreements. While public records requests cannot replicate the work that many computational social scientists and health communication researchers have come to value, this method offers meaningful pathways for studying previous public health messaging campaigns and the tensions that arise between democratic institutions and their myriad audiences.

Concerns of algorithmic bias in the public sector has led to the development of ‘de-biasing’ methods which attempt to remove harmful biases from algorithmic technologies. However, it has been argued that discourses focusing on ‘bad’ algorithms and ‘bad’ data limits practitioners’ ability to recognise how data and algorithms connect to wider issues of injustice (Hoffman, 2019). To counter this, it has been suggested data practitioners must adopt socio-technical algorithmic bias.

To date, little research has been conducted to understand how data practitioners perceive socio-technical algorithmic bias mitigation tools, and the challenges present in adopting them in a civil service context. I discuss my initial findings from a qualitative project which investigated how civil servants perceive socio-technical algorithmic bias mitigation approaches. The data for this paper were collected through conducting a series of seven educational workshops on algorithmic bias mitigation, and seven follow up interviews, in the UK government department the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP). My findings suggest is difficult for civil service practitioners to align technologies to the social justice values which underline socio-technical bias mitigation approaches when servicing a large diverse public. Furthermore, civil service practitioners’ room for action is limited by the political structures they work within, and government policy approaches may sometimes be in opposition to social justice values.

Many theorists of the information economy have argued that digitization has resulted in a “speeding up” of our experience of time (i.e. Gleick, 1999). This work contends that for many, especially those with less power, the techno-utopian vision characterized by datafication and Artificial Intelligence (AI) instead produces a state of prolonged waiting. Drawing from two long-term ethnographic studies examining the production and implementation phases of data-driven technologies in China and U.S., we demonstrate how the “long-standing but mistaken belief, hegemonic in Silicon Valley, that automation will deliver us more time” (Wajcman, 2019) belies the highly stratified temporal impacts of automation, datafication, and AI. Specifically, this work uses AI training and the homeless services system as case studies to reveal the politics of waiting; despite the promise of data-driven technologies, pervasive waiting serves as evidence of an enduring residue—an unequal power structure. Our findings also suggest that the technologies which mediated the experience of waiting in the first, more immediate sense, also impacted how people conceptualize the future.

We offer in-depth theorisation of two multi-site case studies of dying and being dead in Extended Reality (XR) to investigate immersive death experiences facilitated by these media. Our observations, discussion and critique underscore an emergent and nuanced interplay between spatial technologies and death encounters, their linked phenomenological cultural constructions, and the emerging industry that channels these phenomenon. XR are media technologies that mediate digital data with the physical world in real time. Yet, this might take users ‘out' of their surroundings through VR systems that map-but-hide the physical, and replace it with what programmers desire. Or, XR might seemingly add digital artefacts that relate with the physical world via AR systems that have us peering through screens or – arguably, hearing spatial cues (Boisvert et al. 2023), that are computed to fool our senses of what is ‘in’ the real. What – and who – is able to be brought ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the perceived world has significant consequences for the growing industry of necro technologies. Our work then, focuses on two multi-site phenomenological cases within the digital necro-industry: the first, is taking users ‘out’ of the real (usually via VR) to experience death, dying or the dead; and second, bringing death ‘in’ to the physical world via mediations of the dead, death or dying. The paper concludes with a discussion that syntheses our study of industrial trends and phenomenological-technological critique to consider how stakeholders that have hitherto not been invited to compose cultures of XR death-tech might act.

Digital twins are characterized as NextGen smart cities, part of cyber-manufacturing processes and as industry 4.0 systems. They are digital replicas of ‘real’ world physical assets, with real-time information interchanges via sensors between digital replicas and their material assets. They can be immersive 3D environments of cities rendered in game engines and engaged with via VR headsets. Uncritical, enthusiastic and technologically solutionist rationales are generally offered for their creation in IT, engineering and vendor literature. Digital twins are often touted as a system to predict, preempt, prevent and plan for the impact of climate change and for emergency preparedness scenario planning. This paper discusses preliminary observations from a transdisciplinary archival and AI research project of an urban digital twin in the architecture, engineering, construction and owner operated (AECOO) sector, theoretically framed by critical data studies, archival digital diplomatics, digital records forensics and social and technological assemblage theory. A hybrid methodological approach combines a technological walkthrough with twin developers mapping data flows and technological processes, guided by a semi-structured interview instrument to identify what constitutes a record of automated and AI/ML actions that affect social and material outcomes. Preliminary observations identified a complex set of technopolitics, myriad procurement and contractual arrangements where data and technology ownership remains with vendors. It has become clear that digital twins are very messy and poorly governed infrastructures of infrastructure, which are mostly proprietary, lack interoperability and standards. The aim is to understand urban digital twins so that they may be governed in the public interest.

Nostalgia is a culturally resonant, politically potent, and increasingly networked sensemaking resource that frames how people see the past and understand their place in the world. Despite nostalgia's locative meaning, there is a lack of research applying network analytic methods to study its structure and social-semiotic function in online networks which enable connective action based on discursive, affective, and mimetic bonds. While research indicates nostalgia’s dual-edge social function in group dynamics of solidarity and exclusion, these studies often take collective identity a priori, limiting understanding of how platform affordances structure the formation of affective publics around nostalgic discourse and sentiment. Through a semantic network analysis of the popular hashtag #nostalgia (>140B views) on TikTok, this study offers a first step toward understanding the meaning of nostalgia in networked processes of group identification by mapping a topology of “nostalgic neighborhoods” emerging from the co-linkages of hashtags on the platform. Based on the equivalence of these neighborhoods’ semantic structures and thematic meanings, I identify three types of affective publics – play-grounds, heart-lands, and reflecting pools – that emerged in relation to different linguistic and technical functions of the hashtag. I argue the different affective intensities and meanings of nostalgia within these publics reflected the platform’s dynamics of imitation and virality. As TikTok’s algorithmic affordances of visibility and association are less rooted in interpersonal social ties, this study contributes important insights into how the hashtag, as a semiotic technology (Zappavigna, 2018), structures nostalgic affective publics on popular site for nostalgia within youth cultures.

This paper investigates the changing documentality of AI-generated images and their role in the industrial production of war imaginaries. In doing so, we center our analysis on the paradigmatic case of Adobe Stock selling photorealistic AI images depicting the Israel-Gaza conflict. After the outbreak of the war in Gaza on October 7, 2023, the stock photo service Adobe Stock started to collect of AI-generated images produced by users depicting the conflict. Paying customers were then able to download and publish these images in both online and printed media. A public debate ensued when news media began using pictures from this collection, sparking discussion due to the lack of proper contextualization regarding their AI origin. The primary research question guiding this project is therefore: How does the popularisation and industrialisation of photorealistic AI-generated pictures alter the criteria by which we ascribe documentality to images employed in news reporting? To this end we conducted a mixed method research. In the first phase we collected and analyzed 55 articles related to the Adobe Stock case. The initial content analysis focused on framing of the news, in order to point out key themes and discourses surrounding the controversy. The second phase involves photo-elicitation interviews with photojournalists and photo editors, exploring the documentary and informational value of AI-generated images. Preliminary findings highlight the significance of metadata, the role of illustrative captions, and the aesthetics shaping representations of war and violence.

Since 2017, IT professionals have held the highest average salaries in China and are engaged in diverse roles spanning various levels of tech work. Despite their wage advantages, they face intense job market competition and opt to switch jobs to leverage their value or pursue higher salaries in an industry characterized by high uncertainty and mobility. To gain a competitive edge, many individuals turn to “neijuan.” Unlike its interpretation in the agricultural context as involution, neijuan in the workplace refers to internal cut-throat competition. However, given the inherent uncertainty of the IT industry, the outcome of neijuan does not necessarily guarantee success, prompting some professionals to abandon it. Existing research on neijuan primarily examines it as a social phenomenon, with limited focus on employees’ perspectives regarding their practices and perceptions of the term, as well as their reasons for embracing bujuan(not neijuan). By conducting 30 semi-structured interviews in Beijing, a city where the IT industry is highly concentrated, the research investigates how IT professionals perceive neijuan from an insider perspective and how some navigate work uncertainties by embracing bujuan. Using a qualitative approach, this study contributes to academic discourse by providing an empirical perspective distinct from media narratives. Findings reveal that both neijuan and bujuan are adaptive responses to the commercialization of labour in the Chinese IT sector. This research highlights the nuanced dynamics of competition and withdrawal in contemporary Chinese workplaces.

In the past decades, e-commerce platforms have brought significant transformation to not only economic activities, labor conditions, governance, social structures, and cultural production in rural China, but also how rural spaces are configured and experienced. Logistic distribution centers, despite foundation to e-commerce platform economy and providing a unique entry point to examine the materiality and spatiality of e-commerce platforms, drew little scholarly attention. The present study focuses on how logistic distribution centers shape rural land use and rural people’s experiences with space in northwest China. Inspired theoretically by platform infrastructure studies, I am conducting a long-term ethnographic fieldwork (with participatory observation and interviews) in Gansu province, northwest China. I argue that, firstly, in the process of transforming land use for logistic distribution center construction, although most participating parties (local government, developers, farmers, cadres) benefit economically, the interests are unevenly distributed with farmers having little power to negotiate the terms. Secondly, the new spatial experiences emerged for the landless farmers employed at the distribution center are highly gendered: for women working in warehouse, the cultural expectation for care work force them into heavily exploitative, gendered, and surveilled space; while for mostly male delivery workers, though experiencing the urban space with more collective cooperation and autonomy, they are still in a rather precarious position constantly at risk from uncontrollable factors in said space.

The AoIR Flashpoint Symposium conducted in Hyderabad, India, explored multiple facets of digital labour–that which takes place through and on platforms, monitored or managed via digital interfaces, as well as forms of work that contribute to building, maintaining, and populating digital infrastructures. The discussions at the symposium proceeded from the recognition of the need for regulation with the consumer of technology as our main object of concern, while also attending to the humans at the center of the machinery of production–those who build the insides of the machines (coders, designers, annotators) as well as those who make the content that flows through it. This panel extends the discussions at the Symposium with five papers that attend to different types of digital/digitally-enabled work: content creation and curation, app-based services, infrastructuring through tech work, and advocacy for a just and open digital commons. Together, the papers intend to make visible how the everyday labour of those in the Global South undergirds the global network of digital goods, services, and infrastructures–both materially and discursively. We think of the digital economy and culture in planetary terms (Graham & Ferrari, 2022), driven by technologies largely imagined in the West even as they are enabled in very specific ways by workers in the Global South. Much recent work in rapidly digitizing geographies in South Asia and Latin America has pointed to the embedded nature of the digital, as technology and as experience. Cultural creators on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Spotify speak to increasingly dispersed audiences, their content subject to a variety of regulatory regimes monitored and managed in algorithmically impenetrable ways . Gig workers find their work patterns are constrained and defined by interfaces driven by neo-colonial imaginaries that defy regulation yet prompt innovative forms of resistance. Public discourse veers between the celebratory and the cautionary, as in much of the globe, with states responding, in turn, with shut downs and penalties and sops and incentives. The papers in this panel while locating their arguments and their insights in the specific context of India, also speak to the need for imaginaries that are at once broad and contextual, that take from aspirational articulations while rejecting a universalising logic, whether in the realm of design, or use, or regulation.

The panel takes up AoIR’s theme of how industry pre-mediates the future of internet technology and its effects and inquiries into alternatives. Utilising ideas from the study of sociotechnical imaginaries, it aims to locate, map, and critically examine AI imaginaries together with counter-imaginaries that engage with and intervene in those of the AI industry. First, it maps the discursive landscape of Big Tech ‘AI talk’ as a means to study ‘new media concentration’. Which Big Tech AI imaginaries are stabilising? More normatively, do they seek to cement their interdependence both generally but also with respect to the future of internet technology? More specifically, how does the AI industry imagine regulation, sustainability, and the hoped (and feared) AI futures? Recent imaginaries research has emphasised multi-actor, non-linear approaches revolving around the notion of 'public imaginaries'. Along those lines, in the panel we bring together studies of AI imaginaries performed within but also beyond the AI industry. The panel considers the AI industry’s relationships with various actors, such as governments, media outlets, and academia, and the complex interplay that produces imaginaries as well as the issues that come with them. In addressing these questions and interests, the panel also presents various methodological entry points to the study of imaginaries of the AI industry and the larger ecosystem from direct interviews and distant and close readings of (cross-cultural) media coverage to an analysis of online environments such as websites and social media platforms.

Scholars working across fan studies, internet studies and politics have noted the centrality of something that resembles ‘fandom’ across contemporary politics and political participation (Sandvoss, 2005; Hinck, 2019). One important and increasingly visible facet in such scholarship outlines the similarities and overlaps between fandom and conspiracy theory (Aupers, 2020; Marwick and Partin, 2022), a tendency that Driessen, Jones and Litherland playfully describe as “fanspiracy” (2024). Conspiracy theories increasingly emerge from online fan groups, and conspiracy theorists and right wing groups increasingly resemble traditional fan organisations. Both fans and conspiracy theorists develop elaborate and intensive interpretative communities, deploying creative and productive textual production to support their claims.

This panel offers a space to explore the social, cultural and technological underpinning of “fanspiracy” and consider its wide-ranging influence. Across five papers it offers a conceptual framework through which fanspiracy can be understood, highlighting ten key elements that underpin the fanspiracy sensibility, in addition to case studies from the US, the UK, China and South America. The concepts of play and performativity are highlighted as participatory modes of engagement which incorporate fan-like practices both for pleasurable engagement and political propaganda and indoctrination. Decoding of text and audiovisual content is also foregrounded in political fanspiracies as a response to and interpretation of real-world events, often resulting in increasingly esoteric responses.

This panel thus recognises that more ambiguous forms of audience engagement are at play in the current media landscape and offers a timely and relevant intervention, highlighting fannish practices with real-world consequences.

References

Aupers, S. (2020). Decoding mass media/encoding conspiracy theory. In Routledge handbook of conspiracy theories (pp. 469-482). Routledge.

Driessen, S., Jones, B. & Litherland, B. (2023) From fan citizenship to ‘fanspiracies’: Politics and participatory cultures in times of crisis? Convergence (online first). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13548565241236005.

Hinck, A. (2019). Politics for the Love of Fandom: Fan-Based Citizenship in a Digital World. Louisiana State University Press

Marwick, A. E., & Partin, W. C. (2022). Constructing alternative facts: Populist expertise and the QAnon conspiracy. New Media & Society, 146144482210902. https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448221090201

Sandvoss, C. 2005. Fans: Mirror of Consumption. Polity.

As Gruenberg explained in 1935, each ‘invasion’ of a new technology finds adults feeling ‘unprepared, frightened, resentful, and helpless’ on behalf of youth (in Orben, 2020:1144). It is therefore no surprise that tensions between young people’s risks and rights on social media dominate headlines, policy priorities across sectors (including the tech industry), and public debates in many places around the world (Livingstone and Third, 2017). But these social concerns are contextual: as Banaji (2015, 2017) reminds us, what one person considers to be a pressing issue may not be an immediate hazard elsewhere. The aim of this roundtable is therefore to critically interrogate social concerns around youth and social media, paying close attention to differences in worries across, for example, age-range, social class, geography, and individual and community identities.

This roundtable will take a case study approach, with each scholar delivering a five-minute talk focused on one aspect of their research to facilitate a broader discussion of the tensions between risk and rights in relation to youth social media engagements. Participants will discuss: the enduring usefulness of moral panic theory for understanding youth and social media (Gerrard), how mass-mediated worries about Andrew Tate may deflect from more complex and urgent issues concerning male youth (Ging), how understanding the risks and rewards of ‘banter’ for boys and young men can help with tackling harmful online gender norms (Haslop), how we can prevent tech facilitated and image based sexual harassment and abuse and better support young people (Ringrose), and how young people bargain social media access to negotiate with adult anxieties induced by technopanics (Sarwatay). Through our conversations, we will ask: Why do we worry? Whose interests do worries serve? And how might we harness the power of worry?

We have seen an apparent resurgence in far-right and reactionary politics in recent years. In industrialized countries, events like The Unite the Right rally (2017), the January 6 Capitol Attack (2021), attacks carried out by white supremacists and misogynist incels, and the election of right-wing politicians, for instance, serve as flashpoints that bring public attention to the proliferation of far-right communities online. As such, internet scholars have taken up the ways in which these groups communicate, interact, and recruit via digital infrastructures. However, we must remain cognizant of the ways in which pre-digital networks laid the groundwork for the digital movements we see today. This panel aims to contextualize the revival of far-right politics by historicizing our understanding of how these groups came online, and the different forms of intellectual labor and production involved in the transition from pre-digital to digital spaces. Using a variety of research methods and materials, including print and digital archives, we argue that rather than being the sole product of a reactionary opposition to the political climate of the 2010s, the proliferation of online far-right spaces is instead contiguous with older hate movements. Our papers address a range of issues, including the archiving practices of white nationalists, early digital manifestations of white supremacist and men’s rights communities, and the transitions of antisemitism, misogyny, and trolling from print to digital media. Ultimately, we contend that internet scholarship on these movements and phenomena benefits from a deeper understanding of their pre- and post-internet histories.

Popular and scientific reports suggest that dating apps make their users sad. Research blames this on the commodification of love, sex, and intimacy, enhanced by digital technology. Dating apps are accused of giving a false sense of free choice between abundant potential partners and providing tools for atomizing people and filtering through them, while many caution against the growing dependency on dating apps. In this article, I draw on 30 interviews with Polish LGBTQs in the UK to challenge the conflation of dating apps with feeling sad by making a distinction between ‘sad dating apps’ and ‘sad dating app users.’ I demonstrate complex user agency in recognizing the flaws of platformized dating cultures and dealing with them creatively, advocating research that goes beyond relatively privileged users and global dating apps to better understand the role of digital technology in society and culture, especially at the intersection of emotions and agency.

The multifaced nature of online dating practices and experiences highlights both its empowering potential and the challenges it poses, including stigma and violence, particularly within the contexts of queer and LGBT+ communities and the subjectivities they contain. This paper aims to explore perceptions and responses to risks and fears in online dating experiences among queer young adults in Italy and Australia, utilising a qualitative approach through focus groups (15 in total, 8 in Italy and 7 in Australia). Initial findings from Italy reveal concerns about outing, appearance-based judgments, and hierarchies of intimacies, with participants employing various strategies for safety. Similar strategies for risk mitigation during offline encounters are observed across both contexts. As the analysis of Australian focus groups remains ongoing, anticipation mounts for further elucidation of the nuanced dynamics at play within this cultural setting. Overall, the study underscores the resilience and resourcefulness of queer individuals in navigating online dating complexities while emphasizing the need for safer and more inclusive digital spaces for these communities.

In this study, I investigate the intricate realm of single fathers navigating the online dating landscape within Norway, when I ask the question: How do single dads in their mid-life adulthood present themselves as parents on dating apps in Norway? Employing a multifaceted research methodology comprising nethnography and autoethnography, I meticulously scrutinize how these fathers choose to divulge their parental status and romantic preferences through their dating app profiles, with a specifical focus on their self-presentation dynamics, re-partnering strategies, parental obligations, in context with cultural nuances. The insights gathered from this inquiry unveil a thoughtful approach adopted by these individuals, strategically accentuating their roles as fathers while also elucidating their priorities, logistical considerations, and compatibility criteria. By shedding light on these details, this study serves as a crucial exploration into the complexities that confront modern single parents navigating the terrain of dating apps. Furthermore, it offers valuable reflections on the shifting paradigms and evolving norms within contemporary relationships, underscoring the nuanced interplay between personal aspirations, parental responsibilities, and societal expectations in the context of romantic pursuits.

Industrial time and space produce marginalities and resistance: Queer time rejects linearity and potentiates alternate experiences (Halbertsam, 2005). Today, many experience phones or smartwatches as mediating temporal ruptures in daily lives (Mowlabocus, 2016), and hookup app industries monetise intimacies. Given permanent online connectivity, work and leisure are more porous than in a factory, yet corporate industries mediate marginal socialities. Industrious rural queers wrestle control of spatiotemporal intimacies from totalising platforms.

This study maps rural sexuality and hook-up app (dis)comfort and visualises whether hook-up contacts penetrate social networks. Seven semi-structured interviews took place in Finland. Three themes were determined: (in)visibility due to (fears of) marginalisation; categories and borders of app design inadequately reflecting indigenous/gendered, (neuro)queer, rural, linguistic, infrastructural and economic realities; and resisting spatiotemporal app logics.

History has shown the rise of industry as precariously subject to queer temporal forces lacking predictable directions, ultimately declining. Nonetheless, emergent digital industries, such as queer hookup apps, re-attempt to totalise expression via universal logic. They inadequately account for the cultural, linguistic, neurodiverse, gender diverse, disabled, indigenous and local contexts of queer lives beyond major cities, just as clock-time undermined working labourers while empowering colonial interests. We hope to demonstrate the ingenuity of users in questioning and queering social norms, with the hope of building improved digital queer social worlds that do not fetishise queer bodies as visible yet unreacable products for capitalist consumption but rather facilitate spatiotemporal possibilities that fulfil rural, queer, digital, and social needs.

Research on online political discourse has long been concerned with the pervasiveness of incivility across various digital arenas. However, most of this work has focused on discourse that is rude in tone, but not necessarily harmful in substance. Consequently, there remains a significant gap in understanding the true impact of harmful online speech on both its targets and bystanders. Addressing this gap, this four-country experimental study examines perceptions and reactions to intolerant online discourse. We focus on Brazil, Germany, the UK, and the US, democracies with high internet use and notable increases in online intolerance. We manipulate three types of intolerance (discrimination, hateful speech, violent threats), tone (civil, uncivil), and target (women, LGBT) to examine how these factors influence both perceptions and reactions to intolerance. For instance, hateful and threatening speech is expected to elicit stronger responses compared to discriminatory content. Additionally, the study explores how the tone of discourse influences support for content moderation practices and engagement in political discussions, particularly among targeted identity groups. Ultimately, this research endeavors to deepen understanding of the nuanced dynamics of online intolerance and its repercussions on democratic discourse in diverse socio-political landscapes.

Research on online hate speech is burgeoning, highlighting its significant negative consequences on individual and societal levels. Still, there is a lack of attention directed towards understanding the perceptions and experiences of individuals in the general population toward this phenomenon. Such insights could significantly help decision-makers and scholars in formulating initiatives to inform and educate the public, thereby preventing further harm. Therefore, quality insight into the understanding and perceptions of hate speech, as well as related experiences and behaviour is needed. In the absence of established survey instruments and given the fragmented and limited nature of the existing data, the primary objective of this scoping review is to systematically identify online hate speech survey measures, as well as the topics and populations the associated research addressed. Preliminary findings reveal a disproportionate focus on students and young adults and the predominant use of non-representative sampling methods, leaving older population groups under-researched and raising concerns about results’ generalizability. Broad research scopes are predominant; in order to better understand real-world experiences, scholars should aim for more detailed research scopes, including studying OHS in specific online contexts and within specific groups. In terms of topics, existing survey measures mostly cover the topics of direct exposure/perpetration of OHS, neglecting the whole hate speech ecosystem; what comes before and after the dissemination of hate speech online. In terms of question types, ordinal scales are most common, but the lack of standardized scales results in fragmented findings that are difficult to compare.

Digital political visualizations often highlight an inherent conflict between visualization practitioner heuristics and standards, which are geared towards leading audiences to a ‘correct’ reading, and the use of “strategic ambiguity” (Eisenberg, 1984) to increase political appeal. While excellence in creation and interpretation of visualization is studied and theorized primarily with the visualization’s attributes in mind, the ubiquity of digital political visualizations as a rhetorical genre brings forth a host of audience-side considerations and decoding processes so far neglected by scholars. Thus, this paper amalgamates perspectives onto visualization as a communicative technology, a rhetorical genre, and a persuasion-tool by exploring the relationship between graphical excellence, audience’s graphical literacy, and the ensuing polysemy in personal/group readings of digital political visualizations. Asking: How do audiences decode political messages embedded in visualizations shared online? We conducted a bi-national focus-group study (8 groups, 67 participants), in which participants conduct group- and individual- decoding of digital political visualization stimuli. We find that all stimuli, regardless of design heuristics and/or topic, resulted in starkly polysemic readings, with participants’ attitudes ranging between graphical avoidance, and calls for ‘interpretive freedom,’ suggesting that the epitome of literacy is the ability to see beyond the intended meaning and assert one’s own interpretation according to their worldviews. We thus suggest is it imperative to view digital political visualizations’ reception as a result of both visualizers’ choices and audience’s individual/collective interpretive freedom, striving for ‘graphical excellence’ as a shared pursuit of both audiences and visualizers, aimed to bring forth more benign digital deliberation.

In the digital age, platforms such as Twitter foster the emergence of fragmented issue-based communities online, intersecting with traditional media and broader national discourse. However, these digital public spheres often deviate from idealised concepts like those proposed by Habermas, showcasing uncivil discourse and participatory disparities. Recent research highlights a subset of hyperactive users on Twitter who monopolise discussions on contentious topics like abortion, perpetuating intolerance and incivility.

Drawing on social psychological theories of social identity as discursive constructions, this study investigates how hyperactive uncivil and intolerant Twitter users present their identities. Analysing over 30,000 accounts, researchers scrutinise psycholinguistic patterns and emoji usage to answer two key questions: How do these hyperactive users describe their identities compared to non-hyperactive ones, and who are the verified, influencer accounts driving uncivil and intolerant discourse on abortion?

The findings reveal distinct identity markers among hyperactive users compared to non-hyperactive ones. Notably, hyperactive uncivil and intolerant users display varied discursive identifications, often aligning with religious, partisan, and familial affiliations rather than directly addressing abortion-related identities like pro-choice or pro-life. Furthermore, there's a notable dominance of pro-life social identity in online discourse, potentially influencing online public opinion despite being a minority in national surveys.

This research sheds light on the intricate relationship between discursive social identities and their hyperactive behaviours in Twitter issue publics. This study also contributes to our understanding of the key hyperactive actors in American Twitterspheres and beyond, driving incivility and intolerance in abortion discourse.

The complex nature of LGBTQ+ place-making is intertwined with societal norms and technological advancements, which inform the construction of queer spaces. Extant studies show that the evolution of queer safe spaces is marked by the interplay of material and digital environments, leading to the hybridization of traditional notions of queer spaces. Collaborative mapping and geotagging offer tools for empowerment and change, but the role of online media in shaping perceptions of safe spaces still needs to be explored. Thus, this research asks: how do online media construct and mediate urban queer safe spaces in the Philippines? This paper employs topic modeling and word embedding techniques to surface the online discourses of “safe spaces'' and to investigate its contextual uses within the subreddits specifically dedicated to topics related to the Philippine LGBTQ+ community. Findings reveal that urban queer safe spaces in the Philippines are “place-made” through online discourses centering on two distinct physical spaces, bath and fitting rooms, and the experiences and fears of harassment and discrimination in these spaces. Further, semantic associations shed light on the characteristics of ‘safe spaces,’ the groups advocating for their need, and the conditions motivating these groups to call for safe spaces. Safe spaces’ are constructed online as inclusive, private, and secure environments where the LGBT community, especially trans people, can freely express their identities. This constitution stands in response to their experiences of trauma and violence, which appear to be attributed to cis male members of the population.

This paper explores how ‘place’ is reproduced and reconstituted across broadcast and streamed radio, drawing on place-based radio production on public service and college radio in O’ahu, Hawai’i. In this exploration this paper suggests that place, when articulated on radio, is imbued with a significance and 'a discursive/symbolic meaning well beyond that of mere location' (Harvey 1996: 293). The significance of a place and its accompanying particularities of culture, land and language, can permeate a radio show in layers of localized sounds, in turn reproducing ‘place’ from these constituent parts.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson identifies what she terms processes of grounded normativity, ‘strongly rooted in place’ (Betasamosake Simpson 2017: 56) and embodied in everyday practices shaped by the land itself and its constituent communities. I suggest the Hawaiian programming under discussion here both springs from and facilitates such practices, reinforcing in turn particularities of a Hawaiian everyday transmitted through the familiarity of scheduled radio and disseminated independently via Mixcloud. Production practices of selected radio shows are considered here within the local industrial context, in which the National Public Radio (NPR) affiliate for Hawai’i de-emphasises dedicated Hawaiian programming, stating that ‘we are of Hawai’i but we are not Hawaiian’ (HPR research discussion, June 2023).

Betasamosake Simpson, L. (2017). As We Have Always Done: Indigenous Freedom through Radical Resistance. University of Minnesota Press.

Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Wiley Blackwell.

In 2020, Uber celebrated its presence in over 10.000 cities around the world. Such global scaling and granular infiltration of algorithmic-powered management of labour and urban dynamics are achieved through efforts to datafy and visualise cities, making them intelligible under a unified vision. While workers on the ground precariously move across territories, Uber’s engineering teams invest in abstract and disembodied views of the city. Taking Uber’s knowledge production about cities as an object of inquiry, this paper explores the epistemic dimensions of platformisation, delving into platforms' technical and narrative reliance on datafication. Through the analysis of 41 publications on Uber Engineering Blog (UEB), it delves into Uber's textual and visual data stories on knowing cities, highlighting the contrast between a lively community of practitioners and industry, and the neglect in acknowledging platform workers' labour and needs.

For a current research project on synth-pop music, I've been using autobiography to examine how three physical spaces from my teens and early twenties, and three acts associated with them, shaped and were shaped by synth-pop music and practices. The first space is the urban automobile, the second is the club, and the third is the bedroom. All of these physical spaces and the social relations that structured and were structured by them were crucial in making synth-pop music meaningful to me, and yet now, decades later, they (and my experiences of them) must be understood through the lens of digital technologies and spaces, including music and video streaming services, audio files, and online print archives.

This paper uses the Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin's (1996) concept of "remediation" as a starting point for considering how an old medium and its content, like synth-pop music delivered through an analogue medium (broadcast, vinyl, cassette)and remediated via digital media (streaming, for instance), is both structuring of and structured by space, time, memory, and experience. And relatedly, it examines whether André Jansson's (2021) notion of "dwelling" within "zones of entanglement" that enmesh subjects in myriad tangled technologies is useful for examining one's relationships to spaces, places, content, memories, and materialities.

Rushes to adopt the latest technologies to the field of community moderation are generally inequitable for volunteer communities. The closed-door nature of product development at the majority of tech companies means that the logic underlying the creation of new features is opaque. What does this mean for those who want to equitably employ newer technologies in service of volunteer moderators? We present the development and deployment of the Wikimedia Foundation’s Automoderator product as a contemporary alternative to product development processes.

We focus on the collaborative process undertaken between the Moderator Tools product team at the Wikimedia Foundation, and volunteer moderator communities, to design and build Automoderator. Automoderator is an automated anti-vandalism tool, which uses a language-agnostic ML model that predicts the probability of an edit being reverted. The product team integrated volunteer feedback and direction on a continuous basis. This included the use of existing community-created tools to guide Automoderator's direction, the creation and dissemination of a spreadsheet-based testing tool, soliciting user feedback on a central project page, and integrating an extension to allow communities to control Automoderator's behavior directly. We conclude by discussing the limitations and trade-offs of this approach to product development.

In this paper, I conduct a systematic review of the use of VirtualHumans.org in academic studies of the virtual influencer industry. To do this, I analyze all references to and use of content from the Virtual Humans website in relevant published research from 2019 to 2024 (n=189), including the website’s database of existing virtual influencers, interviews with virtual influencer creators and virtual influencer characters themselves, articles on the state of the virtual influencer industry, and profiles of each listed virtual influencer. I pair this analysis with a brief history of VirtualHumans.org from a political economy perspective, noting the factors which went into the website’s creation; its acquisition by Offbeat Media Group, a digital marketing agency; and its organizational shifts following the sudden departure of its founder in 2023. Ultimately, I question whether academic viewpoints of the emergent virtual influencer industry, many which refer to the Virtual Humans website as a valuable resource for grasping a sense of the size and scope of the virtual influencer phenomenon, adequately consider the rooted biases and commercial interests represented by the website as not only a database but a powerful broker within the industry. Moreover, by narrating the organizational development of VirtualHumans.org as an enterprise, I contribute detailed context into the formation of these biases and commercial interests which inform its position in the virtual influencer scene.

This research investigates the complexities of algorithmic management (AM) within the gig economy, focusing on platforms like Upwork. It delves into how gig workers employ algorithmic sensemaking (AS) to navigate and counter the challenges presented by AM. The study emphasizes the paradox of algorithms serving as both tools for operational efficiency and mechanisms of control, highlighting the resultant power imbalances and their impact on worker autonomy. It explores the dualistic nature of algorithms as facilitators of operational efficiency and as mechanisms of control and surveillance, by articulating how they inherently embed power asymmetries that can undermine worker autonomy.

Through a mixed-methods approach that incorporates thematic analysis of community discussions and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, this research uncovers the nuanced strategies developed by gig workers. Significantly, it contributes to the discourse on labor strategies, digital literacy, and the democratization of work in the digital age, offering insights into how gig workers adapt to and negotiate with algorithmic systems. This work not only advances academic understanding of AM's implications for the labor market but also proposes avenues for future research on enhancing gig workers' agency and equity in the platform economy.

Elon Musk is a lifelong gamer. Musk has said that games influence his approach to business, teaching him, among other things, that empathy is a negative quality in a leader. His belief that we are most likely living in a simulation presents the troubling possibility that he is using his expertise as a gamer to undo democratic institutions through technology because he actually thinks it’s just a game. In other words, Elon Musk as a figure, and Silicon Valley more broadly, cannot be understood fully without grappling with games.

Big-budget, high-profile games (triple-A titles like Call of Duty) have traditionally relied on a limited set of narratives and mechanics with many games mirroring the ideological underpinnings at the core of Silicon Valley culture and its emphasis on meritocratic explanations for success and failure. Through a critical discourse analysis of media coverage about Musk’s experiences with and discussions of video games, I focus on how he applies what I’m terming “gamer logic” to a different domain: governance on Twitter/X. I outline how Musk’s gamer logic has shaped Twitter/X since he acquired the platform, and how he thinks about what technology can do for (and to) us. My analysis underscores the necessity for internet studies to engage more deeply with gaming culture so we can better understand (and counter) the vision that Silicon Valley has for our collective future.

The governance of platform algorithms presents a critical challenge as these technologies increasingly pose threats to privacy, agency, fairness, and equity, often reenacting and mediating existing power systems. Traditional governance models, primarily top-down approaches led by policymakers and private corporations, are essential yet insufficient. This paper argues for the incorporation of "bottom-up governance," focusing on the "epistemic-democratic tension" (Krick, 2022) between inclusive participation and expertise-based decision-making. I argue that to ensure that algorithms function fairly and justly for all, bottom-up governance requires involving and taking seriously “lay” experts. Bottom-up governance extends beyond merely soliciting input from citizens on algorithms; it necessitates recognizing the authority of non-technical knowers and privileging subjugated standpoints.

Creators frequently collaborate to share knowledge of and strategies for countering negative experiences of platform governance, including around issues of harassment, copyright enforcement, and censorship. In some cases, they have tried to craft more formal arrangements like creator unions, but these have failed to find stability in the platform economy, which operates differently than traditional labor-employer relationships. We point to a different form of collaboration that casts creators as economic rivals that often have directly competing interests rather than as workers with shared interests. To this end, we propose the concept of creator cartels, understood as contingent alliances between creators leveraged to produce beneficial policy and economic conditions. Taking up a critical media industry studies framework, we analyze the struggle between competing creator cartels invested in Twitch’s policies regarding gambling streams, especially the events that played out in September 2022 as anti-gambling streamers threatened a boycott, pro-gambling streamers leaked damaging information about their rivals, and Twitch ultimately decided to curb the forms of gambling creating conflict between many of its highest profile creators. The gambling saga shows that creators ally and collude with each other to produce mutually desirable outcomes, leveraging audiences and advertisers to influence the platform economy. We contend that creator cartels represent a novel organizational practice that both responds to and harnesses platform power, representing a promising area of inquiry for researchers interested in community governance and the conditions of platform labor.

Following Miller and Rose, the study of platform governance includes analyzing the many techniques platforms use and the knowledge that underpins these techniques.

Platform Governance research concludes that mainstream social media's moderation techniques are driven by liberal principles of freedom and safety. This focus has neglected or overlooked platforms that operate on different values, potentially offering governance models based on social justice.

Platform Governance from a Social Justice Perspective aims to address inequalities embedded in societal structures, going beyond content moderation to reshape power relations and support the emancipation of oppressed communities. This approach is rare in the industry, with few platforms embodying a social justice perspective effectively.

However, Casa Liken, a Spanish-based platform, stands out as an example, designed to offer a safe space for individuals often marginalized by mainstream platforms, showcasing how governance can be approached from a social justice perspective. Casa Liken, operating under a social justice approach, prompts further investigation into its governance techniques and the knowledge underpinning these methods to determine if it truly represents a departure from mainstream platform governance.

Through interviews with its creator, Erika Irusta, this study uncovers the platform's innovative governance techniques, such as "Oxytocin Design" and "Accompanied Moderation," which are informed by social justice knowledge’s tradition.

These findings suggest Casa Liken not only offers refuge from hostile digital spaces but also introduces governance techniques that challenge traditional enabling conditions for discriminatory content, thus contributing to the discourse on platform governance and the potential of technology to support traditionally discriminated communities.

Each year, the music service Spotify encourages its users to share curated stories based on repackaged data extracted from them. In 2023, ‘Spotify Wrapped’ took the form of an in-app experience in which users were re-presented with listening behaviour through lists of their top played songs, artists, podcasts and genres as well as the total number of minutes listened to. Along with these quantified articulations of listening data, Spotify offered new curated data stories, including users’ ‘listening characters’ (called ‘Me in 2023’) and ‘sound town.’ We choose to approach questions of how people perceive and encounter their ‘Spotified’ selves and approach the normative assumptions baked into these data stories by bringing together Spotify users as co-analysts in a creative workshop to interrogate their ‘Wrapped’.

This experimental session takes the form of a short-form workshop (1.5 hour) in which AoIR delegates explore the links between their own ‘Wrapped’ data, identity, and music taste. The proposed workshop format has a dual purpose: First of all, the workshop allows AoIR delegates to critically and creatively explore ‘Wrapped’ as an algorithmic event, defined as a moment in time in which there is a collective orientation towards a particular algorithmic system and associated data. At the same time, the workshop serves a pedagogical purpose as we demonstrate the value of using interactive and craft-based methods to investigate lived experiences of data cultures. It is our hope that AoIR delegates will find this useful as educators too. Across the 1.5-hour workshop, participants will engage in creative exercises using material objects, creative tools, and critical reflection.

There are four core components to this experimental session:

• Context: Introducing ‘Wrapped’ and academic approaches to algorithms (see Bishop & Kant, 2023; Bucher, 2019; Cheney-Lippold, 2011; Seaver, 2023)
• Walkthrough: Analysing the Spotify interface through a modified version of the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018)
• Creative artefact: Assembling a ‘Spotify data selfie’ (Burgess et al., 2022) while a musician plays live music
• Discussion: Determining the value of creative and engaged research.

The session finds inspiration in the methodological approaches of Bishop and Kant (2023) and Reading (2021) used in projects that explored the ‘digital self’ and ‘right to belonging’ respectively. The design of the workshop is guided by an attempt to avoid reproducing patterns of data extraction from users that platforms perpetuate. Our participants do not just share their experience with us: rather, we work with them to propose interventions to think through interactions with data-driven platforms.

So far, we have carried out eight workshops with a total of 172 university students in the United Kingdom. This experimental session includes a trimmed down version of our original two-hour workshop format and provides space for AoIR delegates to reflect with us on the potential and value of this style of research and teaching.

As TikTok emerges as a significant platform for online activism, particularly in the realm of racial solidarity and combating disinformation, this research investigates a new wave of activism termed "TikTok Teach-ins." Through a thematic analysis of 21 TikTok videos produced by Asian American creators addressing themes of solidarity and unity between Asian and Black communities, and combating hate, we explore the content, identity performance, and affordances of TikTok utilized by these creators. Our analysis reveals that Asian American activists employ data-driven evidence and academic sources to challenge stereotypes and disinformation propagated by alt-right and anti-BLM accounts. They aim to educate and promote solidarity between Black and Asian communities, challenging false narratives of division perpetuated by social media. Contrary to existing studies that emphasize playful activism on TikTok, these creators produce serious, didactic content that utilizes TikTok affordances such as stitching and the green screen effect to set an educational tone. Furthermore, we investigate how TikTok affordances facilitate activism, enabling direct engagement with the audience and fostering dialogue and community interaction. Overall, this research expands the understanding of TikTok activism by highlighting the emergence of "TikTok Teach-ins" as a serious and impactful form of activism that leverages playful platform affordances to promote interracial solidarity and combat disinformation.

The article delves into the transformative impact of TikTok's new business model, TikTok Shop, which has revolutionized cross-border e-commerce by introducing managed models for merchants. This shift has led to significant challenges for merchants, including reduced profitability and loss of autonomy, particularly under the hosting model. Employing online ethnography and examining platform policies, the study sheds light on power dynamics within the TikTok ecosystem, revealing the platform's influence over economic activities and its implications for stakeholders. Through an exploration of TikTok's vertical integration and control of the value chain, the article underscores the precariousness of platform-based business models and highlights the need for public accountability. This analysis offers insights into the complex interplay between platform power, merchant autonomy, and economic activities within the TikTok ecosystem, contributing to a deeper understanding of the evolving dynamics in digital commerce.

Among the products of the cultural industry, music certainly represents a central element of the repertoire of Yugoslav cultural memory (Mazzucchelli, 2012; Vučetić, 2012; Pogačar, 2015). As we know, media have always been related to memory: past and present communities have constructed their collective identities by producing and retaining information that is useful or necessary to remember (Assman, 1992). This information expressed through the media, is used by individuals in order to understand their own experiences on the basis of the frames in which these are developed (Boccia Artieri, 2012). In contemporary times, the mass appropriation of digital technologies by individuals adds complexity to the relationship with memory not only in terms of the productive surplus of memories (Hoskins, 2010), but also from the point of view of practices related to the mediatization of memory (Garde-Hansen, 2011). Bearing in mind the mediation of the platform and the role of mainstream media in providing a repertoire from which to actualise remembrance, the paper attempts to answer the question: through what kind of content is the memory of Yugoslavia represented? To do this, 1540 Tiktok videos featuring the same 1980s Yugoslavian rock song “igra rokenrol cela Jugoslavija” (Yugoslavia is dancing rock'n'roll) were qualitatively analyzed. Data shows three thematic strands illustrating how the track is used in reference to three distinct ways of remembering: through nostalgia; through consumerism; through trauma.

This article investigates the characteristics and communicative values expressed in PoV memes, a popular TikTok genre exemplifying key mechanisms of community building on the platform. I analyzed the content, form, and stance of 250 videos and found that PoV memes feature creators lip-syncing to audio remediated from pop culture while mimicking what they imagine would be “your” actions in a given scenario, foregrounding the communicative value of affiliation. In doing so, PoV memes leverage TikTok’s “use this sound” function to enact an “echoic” form of affiliation that constructs ephemeral bonds between users. Furthermore, PoV memes textually articulate multiple perspectives, producing intersubjective encounters that reflect a platform imaginary in which “the algorithm” efficiently clusters similar people on the same “side” of the app. In the conclusions, I offer a novel definition of PoV memes and reflect on the pivotal role of affiliation for TikTok’s platform vernacular.

Drawing on interview and survey data from content writers in the UK communications industries, this paper critically and empirically explores content writers' engagements with generative text AI in relation to creative authorship and expertise. The project will utilize a critical framework of algorithmic literacy to consider avenues for empowering so-far overlooked stakeholders of AI tool use in this creative industry sector.

The paper presents findings from a survey of 1,074 PR and communications content writers and their managers/ employers and from 21 follow-up interviews with the same stakeholders. It will explore the realities of automated authorship and the opportunities and limitations that algorithmic literacy might bring in enhancing smaller stakeholder algorithmic empowerment and expertise. Findings suggest that a) generative text AI is increasingly being used by content writers in ways that challenge speculative forecasts of generative text use and that b) these tools are useful for saving time, idea generation and synthesising existing text, but cannot (yet) be used to replicate or generate authorially convincing tone of voice or brand identity. Such findings suggest that critical algorithmic literacy could be used to create dialogues in workplaces that foreground the problems related to automated authorship - especially in terms of promoting human expertise, challenging algorithmic power and reforming the boundaries of creative subjectivity.

In this extended abstract, I argue that OpenAI ’s Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly being positioned as platforms through the extension of various GPT models into different platforms and applications. My interest is directed at applications that are increasingly playing a part in processes of writing and authorship within creative and cultural industries and is particularly focused on the role of LLMs in the creation of texts and how they are potentially shaping this process. To empirically ground my research and its arguments, I apply the walkthrough method on the writing application Sudowrite. This work has a dedicated interest in responding and contributing to growing scholarly conversations around Artificial Intelligence technologies and various forms of power. An overarching hypothesis of this work is that the enrollment of a profit-driven platform company such as OpenAI in the creative process begets a position of power in that if GPT becomes basic infrastructure for writing and authorship, it will, potentially, embed and naturalise certain ways of doing and organising written communication, creativity, and expression in the interests of corporate power.

Large language models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 have raised questions about the changing nature of work. Research has started to investigate how this technology affects labor markets and might replace or augment different types of jobs. Beyond their economic implications in the world of work, there are important sociological questions about how LLMs connect to subjective evaluations of work, such as the prestige and perceived social value of different occupations, and how the widespread use of LLMs perpetuate often biased views on the labor markets reflected in their training datasets. Despite initial research on LLMs’ world model, their inherent biases, attitudes and personalities, we lack evidence on how LLMs themselves evaluate occupations as well as how well they emulate the occupational evaluations of human evaluators. We present a systematic comparison of GPT-4 occupational evaluations with those from an in-depth, high-quality survey in the UK context. Our findings indicate that GPT-4 and human scores are highly correlated across all ISCO-08 major groups for prestige and social value. At the same time, GPT-4 substantially under- or overestimates the occupational prestige and social value of many occupations, particularly emerging occupations as well as stigmatized or contextual ones. In absolute terms, GPT-4 scores are more generous than those of the human respondents. Our analyses show both the potentials and risks of using LLM-generated data for occupational research.

Using radio and podcast studies as its main scholarship areas, this paper will examine the potential for Virtual Reality (VR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies to change podcasting both in how it is crafted and in how audiences consume podcasts. Focusing on the idea of intimacy this paper interrogates how this defining characteristic of “sound-based digital media” (Hilmes, 2013:44) may persist and evolve, particularly through conceptualizations of space and place, imagined and actual. In a landscape where podcasting is increasingly perceived by (mostly younger) audiences and creators to be a visual medium (Berry, 2023), I want to explore how intimacy may continue to be a defining characteristic of podcasting. In particular, and going well beyond just the aural or indeed beyond the combination of the visual and the aural, I want to understand what intimacy can mean when podcasting moves into the virtual reality immersive space.

This paper’s case study is the video version of episode 398 of the Lex Fridman Podcast, which is an interview with Facebook and Meta’s co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, titled 'First Interview in the Metaverse'. In the podcast, the two meet in the metaverse to discuss the new possibilities that this technology, in combination with AI, may open in the ways that humans communicate with each other through the internet. Looking at themes such as disembodiment, imagination and materiality, this paper examines what VR and AI technologies can mean for podcasting and the way audiences and podcasters may communicate and create meaning through them.

A century ago amidst the emergence of radio broadcasting, cultural critics called for responsible consumption of the new mass medium, decrying the development of sustained, emotionally attuned listening practices. In time, distracted radio listening was accepted as the norm. However, as podcasting grew throughout the 2000s and 2010s, scholars and producers widely embraced an idealized image of the podcast listener as highly attentive – frequently citing careful, immersive headphone listening as a key distinction between radio and podcasting. Yet, in recent years as podcasting has become more mainstream, it is no longer reasonable to assume that listening habits and experiences are singular or steady. This paper explores the possibility of a plurality of modern listening positions by drawing on historical and theoretical discourses of perception from media and cultural studies, multidisciplinary research on boredom and distraction, and contemporary sound studies scholarship on affect, aural experience, and sonic geographies. With the overwhelming number of podcasts being produced (an estimated 2.4 million active podcasts worldwide), podcasting is becoming a ubiquitous presence in modern life, much like music. And with this ubiquity, the way audiences listen is shifting. The paper looks at the example of sleep podcasts and “sleep story” apps (e.g. Calm) to explore how podcasts and related digital audio media are embracing fragmentary, ephemeral content, some even purposefully designed to be boring. Listeners are using these podcasts to control how they engage with their environment, often to create distractions and disconnect.

Like other media industries (e.g. music, film, TV), the podcasting industry has spent the last year coming to grips with the impact that generative artificial intelligence tools will have on the future of podcast production and consumption. Several high-profile examples of AI-generated podcasts have raised questions about the ethics, legality, and creativity of AI for creating podcast scripts, voices, and sound design. These in turn raise larger concerns about ownership and the economics of the platforms that distribute podcasts (like Spotify). In this paper, I survey the state of artificial intelligence in the podcasting industry to address the following two questions: How is AI being used by podcasters and other actors in the podcasting industry? How is the use of AI in podcasting framed in articles and writing about the industry? By sampling a number of podcasts that employ AI during the production and consumption process (e.g. AI scriptwriting, AI voiced hosts, AI sound design, etc.), my paper explores how podcasters and others in the podcasting industry are using AI as part of their everyday work. I develop a typology for the different ways AI is currently being used in podcasting in order to explore the anxieties around the use of artificial intelligence in the cultural industries as well as the everyday, and more mundane, impact AI is having on workflows, production capabilities and notions of creativity in the creative industries.

This study aims to theorize the parasocial relationships between podcast creators and listeners, but with a unique focus on the perspective of the creators themselves. While parasocial relationships are typically studied from the perspective of the audience, understanding the creator's viewpoint can provide valuable insights into the dynamics of these relationships and the modes of addressivity they evoke, particularly with the emergence of intimacy as a keyword in podcast studies (Swiatek, 2018; Spinelli & Dann, 2019; Euritt, 2020, 2023). Through in-depth interviews with prominent podcasters in the Israeli podcast scene, we explore: How do podcast creators imagine their listeners? How are these imagined listeners shaped by the creators’ personal dispositions, their own experiences as podcast listeners, their assumptions about podcasting as a medium, and their actual interactions with their listeners? We argue that the starting point for the postulated intimacy between podcasters and listeners is an imagined addressee whom the podcaster conceives as similar to themselves. Just as authors imagine their audience as they write novels, we assume that the creator’s imagined audience impacts the actual audience that emerges. We also argue that this addressee is brought into being through a shared understanding of intimacy as authenticity, even though only the notion of intimacy actually implies some form of relationship. In making these arguments, we propose a typology of different kinds of imagined relationships with perceived listeners, contributing to a more complex understanding of podcasting and its cultural meaning.

Longtermist ideas and language have become an important ideological source for elite figures in ‘Big Tech’ today. This article critiques longtermism, arguing that it constructs an increasingly influential temporal plane which rebalances our grasp of historical time. Building upon historical theory, this article argues that longtermism’s historical time is distinct from that of ‘modern’ progress as well as presentism. To not only critique but to resist this historical time, this article draws upon Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history and methodology of actualization, arguing for the development and use of methods of resistance that pierce and disturb the historical continuum emanating from longtermism.

This paper draws on ethnographic and historical research at two Australian libraries to explore how the platformization of the web has altered the content, character, and potential future utility of web archives. I argue that, in attempting to collect social media, these libraries face a double bind: while web crawling undertaken at the National Library of Australia allows for immediate but often incomplete or inconsistent access, the API-based approach taken by the State Library of New South Wales constrains both the data collected and how it can be made accessible due to a shifting set of rules that are established and enforced by platforms. By examining the constraints of current strategies to collect, preserve, and make available social media content, I illustrate how changes to platform design and policies significantly influence what is included in web archives and how they are made available. As the ruptures and inconsistencies of collections of social media in web archives are often opaque to both creators of web archives and those using them, I argue that web archives can be read “along the archival grain” for evidence of the platformization of the web. This approach, which draws on anthropologist Ann Stoler’s critical readings on the form and placement of colonial archives (rather than just their contents), allows an assessment of how the gaps, silences, densities, and distributions of web archives are shaped by the shifting power dynamics between different actors involved in the production, circulation, distribution, and use of information on the web.

This paper charts the rise of the software container, or the packaging of software into deterministic and portable environments. Through containers and container management technology like Docker and Kubernetes, software at a high level can be segregated, hidden, moved, and interfaced with in a standard and replicable manner. Like the shipping container's transformations on global economic flows, so too does the software container's offerings of standardization and modularity enable the massive and opaque level of scale that characterizes the cloud today. I also argue that the container's undemocratic drive to scale is closely linked to discourses of openness and the commons, a culmination of Silicon Valley's understanding of freedom as an entrepreneurial endeavor. To articulate this claim, I trace the history of container technology development alongside the history of the cloud, from the roots of Unix through the 2010s. I conclude with a call for critical scholars of technology to not only consider the infrastructural components of platform capitalism but also its logistical aspects, or the techniques coordinating the circulation of capital.

The paper explores small-scale entrepreneurship on the early web, specifically identifying socio-economical practices of local/regional business in the Netherlands during the emergence of the new economy in the mid-90s and early 2000s. The new economy has been described in prior research as not only a novel, financial system but also as a cultural shift. Public media highlight the widespread optimism and subsequent disillusionment of the dot-com era; a period in which many traditional local/regional businesses migrated to the digital realm. In the Netherlands, a push is notable from ideological initiatives and state actors to make the internet accessible and functional for everyone. One can identify an interesting mix of neoliberalism, commercialism, and individualism, as well as everydayness and amateurism that created the backdrop against which local/regional industries took their businesses online for the first time. Following a grassroots approach and a mixed methodology, including computational analysis and content examination of archived websites, the research identifies the integration of domestic and commercial spheres on early websites, as well as a shift towards more professionalized e-business strategies over time. The paper contributes to the field by theorizing small-scale entrepreneurship in the move of local/regional businesses onto the web, offering a methodological framework for archival exploration, and enriching the historiography of the Dutch public web and the new economy from a bottom-up perspective. By foregrounding local/regional perspectives, it aims to provide a cultural-historical understanding of the web and encourages comparative analysis between under-studied narratives and dominant interpretations in the field of Internet History.

Given the size of its young user base, TikTok faces mounting pressure to protect these users from harm in a tense geopolitical and legal environment. This study takes a mixed-methods approach to studying TikTok’s Community Guidelines to understand how it constructs this document to balance competing priorities around protecting children on the platform. I offer that TikTok employs three signature and historically unique approaches within its current guidelines: scaffolding rules by age and risk level, segmenting content into buckets with tailored policies, and siloing certain features and content from children without removing them entirely. This three-part framework represents an original contribution for understanding TikTok’s approach that is useful for analyzing other platforms. Further analysis uncovers latent values of positivity, proactivity, and precision encoded within the guidelines that are informed by latent priorities around appeasing external stakeholders, preempting further legal regulation, and fostering a positive public perception among children and their caregivers. Overall, this critical analysis of TikTok’s guidelines demonstrates how policy documents operate as strategic artifacts that diverge from platforms’ technical realities.

The use of education technologies (EdTech) in schools has rapidly expanded during COVID-19 due to remote learning requirements. Despite the diversity of EdTech products used in schools, only a handful, including Google Classroom, dominate children’s classrooms in the UK. The way these products operate and process data as part of teaching and learning may expose children to data protection risks with immeasurable consequences for children and their life prospects. This paper demonstrates how these data protection risks can manifest when children use Google Classroom for learning in principle and practice. We conducted a legal analysis of privacy policies and legal terms that applied to Google Classroom and other Google services accessible to children within the Google Classroom environment to demonstrate data protection risks in principle and a socio-technical investigation, using a web browser plug-in, called Lightbeam (for Firefox browser) and Thunderbeam (for Chrome browser), to capture the data flow throughout each child’s user journey, in practice. Through legal analysis of Google’s privacy policies, we identified various data protection risks, including the lack of transparency and purpose specification in data processing. We demonstrated how these risks, in principle, became more tangible in practice with scenarios in which each child’s user journey in and through Google Classroom can be exposed to third-party commercial tracking services. Drawing on an example of effective regulatory enforcement, we demonstrated how the risks to commercial exploitation of children’s personal data in education can be tamed.

This paper focuses on the developing panoptic relationship between the parent and teenager or young adult brought about by the introduction of domestic surveillance systems. In particular, the focus is on the attitudes of teenagers toward the increased surveillance regimes and the strategies they employ to adapt to or resist the panoptic gaze. The work brings together the fields of surveillance studies and resistance studies to understand how the concept of domestic surveillance is pushing the boundaries of surveillance culture (Lyon 2018). Additionally, this work contributes to the understanding of everyday resistance within a sophisticated surveillance environment.

Surveillance capitalism has been a significant driver in the development and expansion of data collection from the online to the physical environment. In an attempt to reach further into the previously unmonitored spaces, companies have marketed a range of data collection products for convenience and domestic security. The drive of surveillance capitalism to collect increasing amounts of data has created a mass market for multiple forms of surveillance systems. It has trivialized the installation of internal and external cameras (and microphones), normalized tracking via smartphones and tags, and lowered the barriers to installing overt and covert apps.

The technology constructs a sophisticated digital domestic panopticon that young adults and teenagers are required to negotiate. Through interviews with young adults, this work explores their perspectives on the increased levels of home surveillance and the resistance strategies they employed to protect their privacy.

One recent trend in social media platform practices as well as in proposed policy and regulation for online data rights is a turn towards parental controls. While concerns over children’s safety online and complaints about problematic settings are not necessarily new (Horne, 2021; Horne, 2023), there may be an emerging trend in some countries to try to address growing concerns about the impact of social media platforms by setting regulation on parental controls. To that end, more research is currently needed to study parental controls and age-specific settings for teens and children, as these are comparatively newer developments and a topic and platform feature in flux. This paper contributes to this needed research area by focusing on specific definitions and understandings of privacy.

The purpose of this study is two-fold. Many social media platforms offer both age-specific privacy settings to children under certain age, as well as parental controls to manage the account of their children. As a result, this study will examine which parental controls are available and how they are offered across some of the most popular social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Discord, and YouTube. The dataset for this study will consist of each social media platform’s: 1. default settings of teen and children’s accounts and 2. parental control options. The analysis will broadly consider how each platform defines parental controls via privacy options.

To move beyond the framework of platform labor as either exploitative or empowering, this panel considers intricate forms of self-reinvention within the realm of cultural work. Our inquiries into the labor subjectivities that emerge from processes of adaptation to platform work are oriented around the cultures, practices, and ideals of social media influencer careers.

These papers discuss the mechanisms by which different actors within the influencer industry navigate constantly changing organizational environments, a crucial aspect of what it takes for them to thrive across industries and labor markets. This involves reinventing themselves in an ever-changing technological environment, coping with being subjects of permanent control and evaluation by customers and employers, and making sense of their activities in highly-commercial environments. Consequently, notions of labor and value remain in a continuous state of contestation and redefinition within the influencer industry. The papers span topics ranging from visibility and authenticity to the reinvention of work through platform engagements, as well as the role intermediaries play in the quantification and qualification of influencer activities.

A growing community of researchers are concerned with the social and cultural impacts of digital platforms and the platformization of cultural production tout court (MORRIS, 2020; NIEBORG & POELL, 2018; PREY, 2018; VAN DIJCK et al., 2018). Music streaming platforms such as Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Youtube Music, etc., have assumed a fundamental role not only in the distribution of content but also in taste formation, the scaffolding of individuals’ everyday lives, and identity construction (Hagen & Lüders, 2017; Webster, 2021). In turn, contemporary consumption dynamics have reformulated the relationships between artists, listeners and platforms by eliding both groups into the category of ‘users’ who depend on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram for the discovery of new content, new markets, and music creation itself.This interrelationship directly impacts which cultural products are successful, redefining artists' success, the meaning of fandom, and the creative process (Karakayali, Kostem, & Galip, 2018). This roundtable brings together researchers who study platforms, music, and music consumption from diverse disciplinary perspectives and in a diverse range of locales around the world. We will examine platform-based music consumption practices focusing on research conducted in the UK, China, Brazil and Costa Rica, combining empirical and theoretical insights with discussion of some of the methodological challenges that arise when working in this emerging field. With this, we hope to advance an understanding of music platformisation as a truly global phenomenon, and one which requires similarly joined-up global research efforts. Overall, the central aims are to interrogate how the platformisation of music and its entanglement with individuated social media practices challenges traditional theories of music consumption and to explore its implications for culture and society.

Over the last decade, the rise of memetic media in combination with multimodal platform environments have radically transformed our experience of digital culture. On TikTok, gestures and sounds go viral. Twitter (X) @tags operate as bonding tools and ignite ‘supercharged’ critical publics. Coordinated link-sharing and attention-hijacking drive cross-platform engagement. Narratives promoted by state institutions become part of the global digital culture war. Networked content made up of heterogeneous elements sparks new forms of presencing, propaganda, and play, producing conflict-ridden communities of practice.

The amalgamation of this all into people’s everyday lives marks a qualitative shift in the ways we use social media. While there has always been an affective component to digital objects such as hashtags (Papacharissi 2015), contemporary audiovisual platforms increasingly target the full sensory experience of human bodies. The focus shifts from fleeting encounters with recommended content to ambient arrangements of linked sounds, networked text, clickable icons, and moving images (Han and Zappavigna 2024; Parry 2023). Within these structures, hybrid cultures of amplification emerge, relying on both intensification and extension. As expressive modalities evolve, amplification not only animates momentary affective impulses but also manifests through repeated attempts at attention hijacking that spread across platforms via everyday acts of sharing (John 2017; Citton 2017).

In view of these transitions, internet scholars turn to the role of affect to describe the rhythms of online exchanges that are not reducible to singular constituents and can both diminish and increase the engaging potential of content- and data-informed connectivity (Hillis, Paasonen and Petit 2015; Boler and Davis 2020; Slaby 2019). Acts of participation that open up spaces of amplification escape any clear-cut demarcation. Platform communities assembled through different digital objects sidestep binary conceptions of authenticity and (coordinated) performance, allowing amplification to emerge from multiple discrepancies (Graham et al. 2021; DiResta 2021). Platform-mediated processes of authentication target misinformation campaigns, aiming to identify ‘trustworthy’ content (Burton, Chun et al. 2023). At the same time, seemingly straightforward contributions we like and share can be anything but (Phillips and Milner 2021).

Understood as a web of affective stimulations (Siapera 2019), ambient amplification refers to social media encounters that bear potential for contestation in different registers of online performance, human and nonhuman. On the one hand, the proliferation of echo chambers and filter bubbles drawing together like-minded communities easily fits into the 'crowd modulation' project through the exhaustion of collective inclinations and correlated metadata (Rogers and Niederer 2020; Apprich et al. 2019). On the other hand, the layeredness of networked embodiment on audiovisual platforms rewires predefined trajectories of amplification through 'dissonant' connections that refuse to be contained in neat taxonomies. Although a great variety of scholarly work is dedicated to polarised engagement, there is still a large gap in studying how different modes of amplification are made to work in more ambiguous contexts (Paasonen 2023).

The main challenge in approaching this research field is that the messiness of platform-mediated communication is difficult to comprehend. The shifts in relations of data-intensive participation and networked attention capture have made up the platforms' appeal since the very beginnings of the social web (Gillespie 2010), yet the actual ways these relations are made to work remain understudied. Moving away from the analysis of symptoms–as in the most visible content and events of peak intensity–this panel focuses on the ambient logic of amplification forged by the various attachments that online engagement in multimodal social media affords.

Starting from the premise of plurality, it brings together five papers, each of which explores a different aspect of ambient amplification: Paper 1 explores the role of ‘thirst trap propaganda’ in military image wars on TikTok. Paper 2 reflects on the role of gestures in targeted war propaganda placements, presenting a visual method of slow circulation for amplified TikTok content. Paper 3 analyzes hashtagging- and @-tagging practices on X that undergird a polyvocal infrastructure exposing journalists to networked critique. Paper 4 looks into the spectrum of coordination in the service of attention hijacking, investigating what makes coordinated link-sharing on Facebook look ‘authentic enough’. Paper 5 interrogates the weaponization of narratives of a global culture war by Russian embassies, uncovering geopolitical strategies of amplification.

Content moderation comes with trade-offs and moral dilemmas, particularly for transnational platforms governing borderline content where the boundaries of acceptability are subject to debate. While extensive research has explored the legality and legitimacy of platformised speech governance in democratic contexts, few address the complexities of less-than-democratic developing nations. Through socio-legal analysis and controversy mapping of TikTok’s localised moderation in South and Southeast Asia, the study examines how major actors negotiate the shifting boundaries of online speech. The analysis reveals that neither the platform nor regional states effectively govern borderline content. Primarily, TikTok localises its moderation based on pragmatic necessity rather than moral obligations, intentionally sidestepping contentious political controversies. Governments demonstrate strong will to control online discourse, leveraging legal uncertainty to advance political interests. Local content governance thus always relies on vague rationales around securitisation and morality. The contradictory goals of (de)politicising borderline moderation seemingly counterbalance each other, yet in practice lead to an accountability vacuum without legitimate interests. Given the lack of normative common ground, the study highlights the significance of procedural justice and civic participation to mitigate rhetoric that rationalises imposition of speech norms hinging on imbalanced political power.

This article introduced the concept of “political ambiguity” (Zhan & Qin, 2017) as a background mechanism or discursive origin to explain the adaptive and fragmented (Hong & Xu, 2019) platform governance in China. This phenomenon is significant in China and has its roots in the “guerrilla policy style” between 1930s and 1940s (Perry & Heilmann, 2011). Furthermore, we combined “sociotechnical imaginary” (Jasanoff & Kim, 2009) to form an imaginary angle of understanding the metaphors, promises, warnings, perils, and other future visions made by the state. This term resonates with the political ambiguity in China as its central policy was “schematic designs… started from a mathematical formula with ideal perfection.” (Huang, 1986, p.3)

Our analysis was conducted qualitatively with thematic analysis on eighty-one governmental documents ranging from 2015 to 2022. As preliminary findings, we recognized an evolving and heterogeneous landscape of imaginaries, and identified three layers of them, namely ontological, contested, and infrastructural. The ontological imaginaries reduce the uncertainty of emerging technologies and define its social position. The contested imaginaries refer to themes that are in competitive dialogues with each other. The infrastructural imaginary depicted how emerging technologies became the foundation of other policies and subsidies other political agendas. Together they constitute a directive yet ambiguous governance guideline of “inclusive, prudent, and customized regulation” (National Development and Reform Commission et al., 2017). By foregrounding the state-market relations (Steinberg et al., 2024) in China, this study contributes to understanding how political ambiguity in platform governance was strategically (re)imagined, embraced, and contested.

Large-scale automated content moderation on major social media platforms continues to be highly controversial. Moderation and curation are central to the value propositions that platforms provide, but companies have struggled to convincingly demonstrate that their automated systems are fair and effective. For a long time, the limitations of automated content classifiers in dealing with borderline cases have seemed intractable. With the recent expansion in the capabilities and availability of large language models, however, there is reason to suspect that more nuanced automated assessment of content in context may now be possible. In this paper, we set out to understand how the emergence of generative AI tools might transform industrial content moderation practices. We investigate whether the current generation of pre-trained foundation models may expand the established boundaries of the types of tasks that are considered amenable to automation in content moderation.

This paper presents the results of a pilot study into the potential use of GPT4 for content moderation. We use the hate speech decisions of Meta’s Oversight Board as examples of covert hate speech and counterspeech that have proven difficult for existing automated tools. Our preliminary results suggest that, given a generic prompt and Meta’s hate speech policies, GPT4 can approximate the decisions and accompanying explanations of the Oversight Board in almost all current cases. We interrogate several clear challenges and limitations, including particularly the sensitivity of variations in prompting, options for validating answers, and generalisability to examples with unseen content.

This paper investigates the color-genre-audience associations characterizing YouTube’s platform vernacular through a pixel-level analysis of 40K thumbnails representing ten popular user-generated genres. Despite its thriving creator economy and a its pivotal role as site of identity performance, YouTube remains a vastly understudied platform. Our specific focus is on the gendered character of these associations. Color is regularly leveraged by marketing campaigns to indicate a gendered target-audience, most notably through the use of the color pink as a marker of femininity. Given the bottom-up character of YouTube’s platform vernacular, however, the extent to which thumbnails reproduce the color-based tropes of mass consumer culture remains an open question. Hence, we compare the color characteristics of five female-catering and five masculine- or ambiguously-facing YouTube genres. We utilize computational tools to measure and statistically compare a decade of thumbnails for each of the selected genre based on their dominant colors, colorfulness, brightness and saturation. We find that female-catering genres are significantly brighter and less colorful than the other genres in our sample, presenting a narrow color-palette featuring shades of pink, gray, silver or white. Hence, while the color profile of femininity in YouTube genres does exceed the equation feminine=pink, it remains confined to a narrow and easily identifiable color palette. We conclude our paper by suggesting that the gendered color-genre-audience associations characterizing YouTube’s platform vernacular seek to capture the glance of the intended audience in order to compete in the attention economy of social media, thus reflecting a largely commercialized platform imaginary.

Engagement with beauty has historically been seen as inherently consumptive and (perhaps therefore) inherently feminine and trivial. Popular discourse today would suggest, however, that beauty is increasingly seen as creative, and no longer assumed to be the domain of any one gender, particularly in online spaces. Amidst celebrations of the democratisation of beauty on one end, and cries of an appearance-obsessed culture on the other, what does a situated feminist examination of online beauty culture tell us today? This paper maps the practices of beauty brands online by analysing 545 Instagram posts made by the five most followed beauty brands in India to examine whom they represent and how, but also how these images are produced at the intersection of techno-aesthetic choices, platform affordances, market considerations, and the modes of gendered identity privileged by culture at a given point in time. In the Indian context, where gendered labour precarity has been baked into the social system, and the promise of transformation through digital democratisation runs loud in socio-political discourse, the beauty brand on Instagram offers a site to examine new modes of gendered precarious labour and economic insecurity. At the same time, it also points to the new ecology of beauty media today: the actors and technologies that make it possible, the opportunities it presents, and the new aesthetics and production modes it affords. This work speaks to broader cultures around appearance and gendered self-presentation, and the nebulous nature of labour and influence in today’s media environment.

This paper presents a conceptually oriented interpretation of findings from a case study of finance-related TikTok in Germany, focusing on a subset of accounts which utilize multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes. MLM phenomena are widespread but relatively under-described both in general social science research and within social media research. We conceptualize and analyze MLMs as a phenomenon which is at once highly specific and quite general. Current MLM operations are highly specific in terms of the platformized communication strategies and the intended customer funneling operations across platforms. The prototypical communications structure involves a series of communication phenomena tailored to create specific awareness contexts, each taking advantage of platform-specific genres and content niches as well as platform-specific communication features such as mass dissemination and direct messaging. At the same time, these operations clearly resemble those identified in scholarship on multi-level-marketing operations that predate flatforms. In turn, these operations can be understood in the larger context of contemporary commodified feminism.