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Social and socioeconomic interactions and transactions often require trust. In digital spaces, the main approach to facilitating trust has effectively been to try to reduce or even remove the need for it through the implementation of reputation systems. These generate metrics based on digital data such as ratings and reviews submitted by users, interaction histories, and so on, that are intended to label individuals as more or less reliable or trustworthy in a particular interaction context. We suggest that conventional approaches to the design of such systems are rooted in a capitalist, competitive paradigm, relying on methodological individualism, and that the reputation technologies themselves thus embody and enact this paradigm in whatever space they operate in. We question whether the politics, ethics and philosophy that contribute to this paradigm align with those of some of the contexts in which reputation systems are now being used, and suggest that alternative approaches to the establishment of trust and reputation in digital spaces need to be considered for alternative contexts.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have emerged as powerful generative Artificial Intelligence solutions. This paper presents results and reflections of an experiment done with the LLM GPT 3.5-Turbo to perform an inductive Thematic Analysis (TA). Previous research has worked on conducting deductive analysis. Thematic Analysis is a qualitative method for analysis commonly used in social sciences and it is based on interpretations by the human analyst(s) and the identification of explicit and latent meanings in qualitative data. The paper presents the motivations for attempting this analysis; it reflects on how the six phases to a TA proposed by Braun and Clarke can partially be reproduced with the LLM and it reflects on what are the model's outputs. The paper uses two datasets of open access semi-structured interviews, previously analysed by other researchers. The first dataset contains interviews with videogame players, and the second is a dataset of interviews with lecturers teaching data science in a University. This paper used the analyses previously conducted on these datasets to compare with the results produced by the LLM. The results show that the model can infer most of the main themes from previous research. This shows that using LLMs to perform an inductive TA is viable and offers a good degree of validity. The discussion offers some recommendations for working with LLMs in qualitative analysis.

This article contributes to the research on bots in Social Media. It takes as its starting point an emerging perspective which proposes that we should abandon the investigation of the Turing Test and the functional aspects of bots in favor of studying the authentic and cooperative relationship between humans and bots. Contrary to this view, this article argues that Turing Tests are one of the ways in which authentic relationships between humans and bots take place. To understand this, this article introduces the concept of Ordering Turing Tests: these are sort of Turing Tests proposed by social actors for purposes of achieving social order when bots produce deviant behavior. An Ordering Turing Test is method for labeling deviance, whereby social actors can use this test to tell apart rule-abiding humans and rule-breaking bots. Using examples from Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games, this article illustrates how Ordering Turing Tests are proposed and justified by players and service providers. Data for the research comes from scientific literature on Machine Learning proposed for the identification of bots and from game forums and other player produced paratexts from the case study of the game Runescape.

PurposeThis paper presents a qualitative study of penetration testing, the practice of attacking information systems to find security vulnerabilities and fixing them. The purpose of this paper is to understand whether and to what extent penetration testing can reveal various socio-organisational factors of information security in organisations. In doing so, the paper innovates theory by using Routine Activity Theory together with phenomenology of information systems concepts.Design/methodology/approachThe articulation of Routine Activity Theory and phenomenology emerged inductively from the data analysis. The data consists of 24 qualitative interviews conducted with penetration testers, analysed with thematic analysis.FindingsThe starting assumption is that penetration testers are akin to offenders in a crime situation, dealing with targets and the absence of capable guardians. A key finding is that penetration testers described their targets as an installed base, highlighting how vulnerabilities, which make a target suitable, often emerge from properties of the existing built digital environments. This includes systems that are forgotten or lack ongoing maintenance. Moreover, penetration testers highlighted that although the testing is often predicated on planned methodologies, often they resort to serendipitous practices such as improvisation.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to theory, showing how Routine Activity Theory and phenomenological concepts can work together in the study of socio-organisational factors of information security. This contribution stems from considering that much research on information security focuses on the internal actions of organisations. The study of penetration testing as a proxy of real attacks allows novel insights into socio-organisational factors of information security in organisations.

The paper offers a conceptual analysis and a case study research on the design of e-participation in environmental policy-making for young people. This is achieved by connecting the concept of environmental action with e-participation design. Through a literature review, four core dimensions of environmental action for young people are identified: ownership, participation, stakes in the future and experience. Through a case study of research conducted for an applied project aimed at designing and piloting a novel e-participation solution, the paper shows how young people, implicitly see the connections between these four dimensions of environmental action and the e-participation process. The dimensions of environmental action have, then been used as the basis for co-creation activities and for a subsequent evaluation of e-participation. The results support the position that environmental action can underpin the design and can increase e-participation capacity in environmental policy-making for young people.

Social and socioeconomic interactions and transactions often require trust. In digital spaces, the main approach to facilitating trust has effectively been to try to reduce or even remove the need for it through the implementation of reputation systems. These generate metrics based on digital data such as ratings and reviews submitted by users, interaction histories, and so on, that are intended to label individuals as more or less reliable or trustworthy in a particular interaction context. We undertake a disclosive archaeology (Introna, 2014) of typical reputation systems, identifying relevant figuration agencies including affordances and prohibitions, (cyborg) identities, (cyborg) practices and discourses, in order to examine their ethico-political agency. We suggest that conventional approaches to the design of such systems are rooted in a capitalist, competitive paradigm, relying on methodological individualism, and that the reputation technologies themselves thus embody and enact this paradigm within whatever space they operate. We question whether the politics, ethics and philosophy that contribute to this paradigm align with those of some of the contexts in which reputation systems are now being used, and suggest that alternative approaches to the establishment of trust and reputation in digital spaces need to be considered for alternative contexts

Social and socioeconomic interactions and transactions often require trust. In digital spaces, the main approach to facilitating trust has effectively been to try to reduce or even remove the need for it through the implementation of reputation systems. These generate metrics based on digital data such as ratings and reviews submitted by users, interaction histories, and so on, that are intended to label individuals as more or less reliable or trustworthy in a particular interaction context. We undertake a disclosive archaeology (Introna, 2014) of typical reputation systems, identifying relevant figuration agencies including affordances and prohibitions, (cyborg) identities, (cyborg) practices and discourses, in order to examine their ethico-political agency. We suggest that conventional approaches to the design of such systems are rooted in a capitalist, competitive paradigm, relying on methodological individualism, and that the reputation technologies themselves thus embody and enact this paradigm within whatever space they operate. We question whether the politics, ethics and philosophy that contribute to this paradigm align with those of some of the contexts in which reputation systems are now being used, and suggest that alternative approaches to the establishment of trust and reputation in digital spaces need to be considered for alternative contexts.

Diplomatic action in international relations is a global security priority in the inter-connected world. The birth of cyber diplomacy, occurred in the year 2007, which will always be remembered due to a wide-ranging cyber attack on Estonia. Indeed, Estonia is known for being one of the most wired countries in Europe. The attack consisted of crippled computer networks because of hackers which paralysed numerous amount of government and corporates sites. The escalation in these kinds of attacks highlighted the need for governments to formulate national cyber strategies. This sprang from the realisation that cyberspace, like the physical world, also has military and strategic dimensions and requires countries to work together to defeat cyber opponents. Attacks within cyberspace are subject to strategically-formulated threats, which go beyond the usual physical terrorist-type threats. Global progress, democracy and peace are at stake. This makes cyber diplomacy a major issue for countries' foreign policies, due to the interdisciplinary nature of the domain. A number of aspects are relevant in this respect: policies, politics and sociology (dread), diplomacy, digital/cyber science, multilateralism and world history. This paper reports on a systematic literature review that was carried out to reveal the dimensions of current cyber diplomacy research. While a number of studies have introduced and defined "Cyber Diplomacy" and its associated diplomatic actions, none have sought to distinguish this field from the more traditional and well established diplomacy concept. This is a significant gap in the literature, which will be the topic of future research.

Diplomatic action in international relations is a global security priority in the inter-connected world. The birth of cyber diplomacy, occurred in the year 2007, which will always be remembered due to a wide-ranging cyber attack on Estonia. Indeed, Estonia is known for being one of the most wired countries in Europe. The attack consisted of crippled computer networks because of hackers which paralysed numerous amount of government and corporates sites. The escalation in these kinds of attacks highlighted the need for governments to formulate national cyber strategies. This sprang from the realisation that cyberspace, like the physical world, also has military and strategic dimensions and requires countries to work together to defeat cyber opponents.Attacks within cyberspace are subject to strategically-formulated threats, which go beyond the usual physical terrorist-type threats. Global progress, democracy and peace are at stake. This makes cyber diplomacy a major issue for countries' foreign policies, due to the interdisciplinary nature of the domain. A number of aspects are relevant in this respect: policies, politics and sociology (dread), diplomacy, digital/cyber science, multilateralism and world history.This paper reports on a systematic literature review that was carried out to reveal the dimensions of current cyber diplomacy research. While a number of studies have introduced and defined "Cyber Diplomacy" and its associated diplomatic actions, none have sought to distinguish this field from the more traditional and well established diplomacy concept. This is a significant gap in the literature, which will be the topic of future research.

This paper explores governance in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs), one sub-sector of the digital games industry. Informed by media governance studies, Surveillance Studies, and game studies, this paper identifies five elements which form part of the system of governance in MMOGs. These elements are: game code and rules; game policies; company community management practices; player participatory practices; and paratexts. Together these governance elements function as a surveillant assemblage, which relies to varying degrees on lateral and hierarchical forms of surveillance, and the assembly of human and nonhuman elements. Using qualitative mixed methods we examine and compare how these elements operate in three commercial MMOGs: Eve Online, World of Warcraft and Tibia. While peer and participatory surveillance elements are important, we identified two major trends in the governance of disruptive behaviours by the game companies in our case studies. Firstly, an increasing reliance on automated forms of dataveillance to control and punish game players, and secondly, increasing recourse to contract law and diminishing user privacy rights. Game players found it difficult to appeal the changing terms and conditions and they turned to creating paratexts outside of the game in an attempt to negotiate the boundaries of the surveillant assemblage. In the wider context of self-regulated governance systems these trends highlight the relevance of consumer rights, privacy, and data protection legislation to online games and the usefulness of bringing game studies and Surveillance Studies into dialogue.

Personas have become an important tool for Human-Computer Interaction professionals. However, they are not immune to limits and critique, including stereotyping. We suggest that while some of the criticisms to personas are important, the use of personas is open to them in part because of an unquestioned focus on explicating user needs and goals. Traditionally indeed, personas and the associated scenarios are created by focusing on needs and goals of the target users. This focus, while helping designers, also obscures some other potentially relevant aspects. In particular, when the goal of the product or software being designed is associated with social and political goals rather than with bringing a product to the market, it may be relevant to focus personas on political aspirations, social values and the will of personas to take action. We argue that it would be possible when producing personas (and associated scenarios too) to partially move away from representing needs and embrace personas which more explicitly represent political or social beliefs. We suggest that drawing on phenomenography will allow to achieve this. We provide empirical evidence for our position from two large-scale European projects, the first one in the area of Social Innovation and the second in the area of eParticipation.

Personas have become an important tool for Human-Computer Interaction professionals. However, they are not immune to limitations and critique, including stereotyping. We suggest that while some of the criticisms to personas are important, the use of personas is open to them in part because of an unquestioned focus on explicating user needs and goals in traditional persona research and creation. This focus, while helping designers, obscures some other potentially relevant aspects. In particular, when the goal of the product or software being designed is associated with social and political goals rather than with bringing a product to the market, it may be relevant to focus personas on political aspirations, social values and the will or capacity of personas to take action. We argue that it is possible when producing personas (and associated scenarios) to partially move away from representing needs and embrace personas which more explicitly represent political or social beliefs and values. We also suggest that a phenomenographic approach to user data analysis is one way to achieve this. We provide empirical evidence for our position from two large-scale European projects, the first one in the area of Social Innovation and the second in the area of eParticipation.

Personas have become an important tool for Human-Computer Interaction professionals. However, they are not immune to limitations and critique, including stereotyping. We suggest that while some of the criticisms to personas are important, the use of personas is open to them in part because of an unquestioned focus on explicating user needs and goals in traditional persona research and creation. This focus, while helping designers, obscures some other potentially relevant aspects. In particular, when the goal of the product or software being designed is associated with social and political goals rather than with bringing a product to the market, it may be relevant to focus personas on political aspirations, social values and the will or capacity of personas to take action. We argue that it is possible when producing personas (and associated scenarios) to partially move away from representing needs and embrace personas which more explicitly represent political or social beliefs and values. We also suggest that a phenomenographic approach to user data analysis is one way to achieve this. We provide empirical evidence for our position from two large-scale European projects, the first one in the area of Social Innovation and the second in the area of eParticipation .

The paper concerns the development of digitally-mediated technologies that value social cooperation as a common good rather than as a source of revenue and accumulation. The paper discusses the activities that shaped a European participatory design project which aims to develop a digital space that promotes and facilitates the 'Commonfare', a complementary approach to social welfare. The paper provides and discusses concrete examples of design artifacts to address a key question about the role of co- and participatory design in developing hybrid spaces that nurture sharing and autonomous cooperation: how can co-design practices promote alternatives to the commodification of digitally-mediated cooperation? The paper argues for a need to focus on relational, social, political and ethical values, and highlights the potential power of co- and participatory design processes to achieve this. In summary, the paper proposes that only by re-asserting the centrality of shared values and capacities, rather than individual needs or problems, co-design can reposition itself thereby encouraging autonomous cooperation.