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A slow shutdown is an ensemble of flexible state regulations implemented over time that have the effect of prohibiting, interrupting, or making too costly online content creation. A slow shutdown differs from a technical shutdown in which a state authority blocks access to the Internet or platforms within its sovereign boundaries, usually for a short period. This article conceptualizes and delineates a slow shutdown in Tanzania. Using the method of process tracing, the article describes the Tanzania government's adoption of a series of repressive information and Internet regulations from 2010 to 2018 and analyzes its controversial 2018 online content regulations, which led many Tanzanians to cease expressive activities on the Internet. Drawing on Tanzanian policy documents, English-language national and international press coverage, nongovernmental organization reports, and Tanzanian blogs and websites, the study highlights the social impacts of the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party-led government's laws. It also extends research on media control and networked authoritarianism by demonstrating the variable forms, temporalities, and affects of Internet shutdowns and considering their relation to gender and class differences.

Aus kritischer Perspektive untersucht der Beitrag Präsentation und Perzeption von afrikanischen Flüchtlingen durch westliche Massenmedien. Speziell handelt es sich um Flüchtlinge aus Ruanda im Osten der Demokratischen Republik Kongo einerseits, um vier bedeutende Fernsehsender aus den USA (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC) andererseits. Der Beitrag problematisiert, in welchem Maße sich die Präsentation des Flüchtlingsdaseins und das tatsächliche Leben der Flüchtlinge unterscheiden, indem diese ihr Schicksal selbst in die Hand nehmen. (DÜI-Kör)

The Internet is a critical tool for communication and knowledge acquisition in societies across the globe. Unfortunately, its use has become a battlefield for governments, corporations, and individuals to censor speech and access to information. In this paper, we present research into the use of social media for free speech in Turkey, Mongolia, and Zambia as a basis for discussing the limits of Internet freedoms. We discuss the actors, adversaries, social and technological limits, as well as limitations of existing tools for the free exchange of ideas on-line. We conclude with a discussion of how design and development choices for technology can a.ect marginalized communities, as well as the ethical and technical considerations for developing tools and applications that support Internet freedoms.

Intro -- Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I: Sensing, Automating, Mediating -- 1 Atmospheric Mediation: From Smart Dust to Customizable Governance -- The Politics of Verticality -- Vertical Mediation -- Atmospheric Mediation -- "Framelessness" -- Environmentality -- Automated Mediation -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 2 The Other Side of the Smart Phone: MEMS Sensors and the Tiny Matters of Mediation -- Manufacturing MEMS -- Drawing Relations -- Teardowns -- There's an App for That -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 3 EugenicTech: Three Perspectives on the (B)anality of AI -- Dominant Representations of AI Infrastructure as Enforced Neurotypicality -- Human in the Loop and the Banality of AI Evil -- Google's DeepDream and the Anality of AI -- Mario Klingemann's Expulsive AI -- Notes -- 4 Coding and Encoding Streamed Media: The Cultural Infrastructure of the Netflix Recommender System -- Algorithm as Infrastructure, Infrastructures as Algorithmic -- The Tale of the Netflix Recommender System -- The Configuration of Algorithmic Infrastructures -- Classification -- Categorization -- Codification -- The Power of Cultural Infrastructures -- Conclusion -- Notes -- 5 Engaging Opacity: Spotify and the Poiesis of Algorithmic Backends -- Opacity and Accountability -- Data Profiling as Interpellation -- The Missing Half-Second -- Feeding Forward -- Ethics on the Fly through Inauthentic Worlds -- Notes -- Part II: Datafying, Serving, Distributing -- 6 The Social Mapping of Hyperscale Data Center Regions: Placemaking, Infrastructuring, Curating -- Placemaking and Economic Development -- Infrastructuring -- Curating -- Infrastructural Geographies of Data Centers and Social Mapping of Their Regional Hosts -- Notes -- 7 Cross-sectoral Relations in VoD Markets: Frontend, Backend, and Deepend in India.

In the Fall of 2021 we co-taught a graduate seminar that launched a year long Mellon Sawyer series. In this essay, we reflect on the contexts, paradoxes and processes that informed our multidisciplinary collaboration teaching a Sawyer Seminar on Race, Migration and White Supremacy in California. We believed that it was vital to being with the migration experiences of Native Americans from rural areas to urban California. We sought to position American Indian migration histories as foundational to cultural and historical understandings of migration to California. Our account of our pedagogical practices details the rewards and realities of collaborative teaching at a public research university. We identify the paradoxes and tensions that we encountered as we developed a syllabus that did not simply "add and stir" different methodologies, histories or fields, but instead, synthesized theoretical and pedagogical across film, art and media studies, history and sociology.

Building on research on network sovereignty in American Indian communities, this study explores how the Internet and information and communication technologies (ICTs) are imagined and used by members of the Blackfeet community in Montana. Using qualitative mixed methods, including interviews with 38 Blackfeet community members, the study provides a brief overview of the Siyeh Corporation's Internet services in Blackfeet territory and presents a thematic analysis of interview data focused on three issues: the Internet as a daily lifeline; peoples' ideals and standards of sovereignty; and tensions around network sovereignty. The article explores how Blackfeet community members assess their tribe's moves to assert network sovereignty, presenting a range of opinions regarding tribally owned and operated Internet services. Building from interview data, the article suggests that practices and perceptions of local tribal governance are vital to mounting and sustaining meaningful network sovereignty initiatives.

Brazilians have adopted WhatsApp as a national media and communication infrastructure over the past several years, although it is controlled by its private US-based owner, Facebook. This article explores the diverse, contentious and influential roles the app played in the country during disruptions to its use from 2015 to 2018. Using content analysis, we critically engage with user-generated memes and news media coverage responding to these disruptions. In these cases, Brazilians self-reflexively questioned the app's role in their everyday lives and country, reassessing what it means to rely on a national infrastructure owned by an unaccountable global media conglomerate.

Exploring how we make, distribute, and consume today s media systems Media backends--the electronics, labor, and operations behind our screens--significantly influence our understanding of the sociotechnical relations, economies, and operations of media. Lisa Parks, Julia Velkova, and Sander De Ridder assemble essays that delve into the evolving politics of the media infrastructural landscape. Throughout, the contributors draw on feminist, queer, and intersectional criticism to engage with infrastructural and industrial issues. This focus reflects a concern about the systemic inequalities that emerge when tech companies and designers fail to address workplace discrimination and algorithmic violence and exclusions. Moving from smart phones to smart dust, the essayists examine topics like artificial intelligence, human-machine communication, and links between digital infrastructures and public service media alongside investigations into the algorithmic backends at Netflix and Spotify, Google s hyperscale data centers, and video-on-demand services in India. A fascinating foray into an expanding landscape of media studies, Media Backends illuminates the behind-the-screen processes influencing our digital lives. Contributors: Mark Andrejevic, Philippe Bouquillion, Jonathan Cohn, Faithe J. Day, Sander De Ridder, Fatima Gaw, Christine Ithurbide, Anne Kaun, Amanda Lagerkvist, Alexis Logsdon, Stine Lomborg, Tim Markham, Vicki Mayer, Rahul Mukherjee, Kaarina Nikunen, Lisa Parks, Vibodh Parthasarathi, Philipp Seuferling, Ranjit Singh, Jacek Smolicki, Fredrik Stiernstedt, Matilda Tudor, Julia Velkova, and Zala Volcic

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- I. INDUSTRY, PROGRAMS, AND PRODUCTION CONTEXTS -- Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in the Culture of Conglomeration -- Lifestyling Britain: The 8–9 Slot on British Television -- What If ?: Charting Television's New Textual Boundaries -- Interactive Television and Advertising Form in Contemporary U.S. Television -- Flexible Microcastting: Gender, Generation, and Television-Internet Convergence -- II. TECHNOLOGY, SOCIETY, AND CULTURAL FORM -- Television's Next Generation: Technology/ Interface Culture/Flow -- The Rhythms of the Reception Area: Crisis, Capitalism, and the Waiting Room tv -- Broadcast Television: The Chances of Its Survival in a Digital Age -- Double Click: The Million Woman March on Television and the Internet -- III. ELECTRONIC NATIONS, THEN AND NOW -- One Commercial Week: Television in Sweden Prior to Public Service -- Media Capitals: Cultural Geographies of Global tv -- At Home with Television -- Pocho.com: Reimaging Television on the Internet -- IV. TELEVISION TEACHERS -- Television, the Housewife, and the Museum of Modern Art -- From Republic of Letters to Television Republic? Citizen Readers in the Era of Broadcast Television -- Cultural Studies, Television Studies, and the Crisis in the Humanities -- Contributors -- Index