As informational automation advances, emerging systems of identification are proposing new computational ways of creating metadata about the human body. This shift represents a rupture akin to the transition from ancient identification techniques for inscribing the body to modern identification documents carried by the body, both of which are rooted in colonial history. Amid concerns over datafication and human agency, this paper argues that not only material bodies, but also human experience is molded to fit a dominant logic of abstraction and quantification. Building on Koopman’s (2019) discussion of informational formats as instruments of power and cultural anthropology, we advocate for a historical understanding of tokenization beyond information theory. Based on a two-case study of technical standards (Open Badge, POAP), the paper explores how human experience is tokenized (abstracted into informational formats computationally assigned to a body) and ledgerized (recorded on a communicative ledger) as an attribute of the token-holder. Experience thus becomes machine-readable and ready to circulate across communication infrastructures and systems of automated decision-making. By analyzing these emerging digital tokens’ symbolic and material characteristics, we trace them back in history and discuss the implications of their changing materiality. Eventually, we argue that computational tokens constitute the attributed human, an individual increasingly defined by the qualities of themselves that can be verified on digital identification systems through tokens derived from their abstracted lived experience. Using a thematic analysis of technical documentation, three emerging themes are identified: increased circulability, enhanced granularity and conjunction of ludic and bureaucratic logics.

This paper focuses on the role of fringe platforms in the UK’s 2024 anti-migrant riots and introduces the term ‘digital banter’ to describe a highly-localised discursive typology that acts to veil xenophobia, misogyny, and other forms of extremity behind the facade of humour. Several fringe platforms were identified as instrumental in spreading toxic content in the run up to the riots (Scott, 2024), and this paper interrogates digital banter on fringe platforms by applying the conceptual framework of “extreme speech” (Udupa & Pohjonen, 2019). By shifting analysis away from the faux binary between hate speech and an acceptable other, the spectrum of extreme speech recognises context and culturally coded circumstances. Thus, via extensive digital ethnography on three fringe platforms, three significant findings emerge from the analysis. The first is that digital banter is an English-specific repertoire of extreme speech that has comparable analogs cross-culturally. The second is that “banter merchants” set the rules of acceptability on fringe platforms. The third is that digital banter acts as a primary motivation for migration away from major platforms. By positioning banter within the framework of extreme speech, this paper contributes to understanding how small platforms mediate extremity through culturally-specific speech repertoires.

The rise of the creator economy has led mom and family influencers to integrate their children into their online narratives, enhancing their relatability and commercial value. Through emotional connection with audiences, influencers secure partnerships and build their brands. Children presence raises ethical concerns, including privacy threats, commodification of intimacy, and the pressures of algorithm-driven content production. In Europe, GDPR regulations and growing awareness of these risks may be shaping more cautious approaches to child visibility.

The research investigates how mom and family influencers negotiate the imperative to share their children and whether resistance emerges among influencers and users. This study adopts a multi-method approach employing: content analysis of 8,824 Instagram and TikTok posts from 34 Italian family influencers (March–July 2024) examining child visibility in organic and sponsored content; a survey targeted mothers with at least a child aged 0-5 years (n=485) from a major digital parenting community; nine in-depth interviews with mothers, including influencers who deliberately exclude their children from social media content.

Preliminary findings reveal different levels of child visibility in influencer content (frequent in organic posts and variable in sponsored content). Questionnaire data indicate that about half of the respondents (54.5%) avoid featuring their children on social media, using them primarily as a diary. Interviews highlight concerns over privacy, with some influencers opting to exclude children despite potential sponsorship losses and the awareness that platform algorithms favor child-related content.

The study suggests a growing awareness of digital privacy risks, where financial incentives compete with ethical considerations.

Cultural producers of what one might consider more traditional media have denounced content (shorthand for digital, social media, or online objects) as an object as a far cry from creative output, and the term as an assault on art. Writers, directors, musicians, actors, and even stand-up comedians have not only disparaged content, but also those that produce it. As content is increasingly used to refer not just to media that circulates online but to the products of traditional cultural industries offline too, these producers have disparaged the use of the term and content itself as an assault on their outputs. Through critical discourse analysis of statements and conversations from filmmakers, actors, writers, musicians, and stand-up comedians, I examine how traditional cultural producers negotiate the term content’s application in and encroachment on their fields. I argue that discourse about content is not representative of a sea change in art’s integrity as much as it is a term that creators use to express anxieties about the devaluation of their work in response to changing political economic arrangements that the internet has catalyzed. As their work becomes increasingly accessible to larger audiences via digitization, cultural creators worry that their work is becoming less precious, sanctified, and more easily consumed and discarded, i.e., that their work could become content.