Suchergebnisse

A timely and critical investigation into the way media operates in a so-called global age, presenting new empirical data on key sites of news production and crucially tying these findings to ongoing debates on globalization and democracy, Much analysis and hope in both academia and political rhetoric currently rests on ideas of deliberation and post-national democratic practices -- the roots of a 'global civil society'. This has taken force as not just an analysis of social and political change, but as a normative project. This book has grown out of concern with how changes in media are influencing democratic function and politics in our global age. Lina Dencik argues that counter to much discussion, the very notion of a global civil society needs to be subjected to rigorous critique, given so much of the debate is based on an implicit (and problematic) account of changing conditions, not least within the media. Bridging the gap between different literatures across disciplines and presenting new empirical data on key sites of news production, the book provides a fresh and critical approach to the topical debate on media, globalization and social and political change

This article engages with the interplay between data-driven surveillance and contemporary social imaginaries, using research based on the aftermath of the Snowden leaks. Drawing on Mark Fisher's use of the term "realism" in relation to capitalist realism, I advance the argument here that public debate and response to the Snowden leaks indicate a similar ''pervasive atmosphere" that comes to regulate thought and action, in which the active normalization of surveillance infrastructures limits the possibilities of even imagining alternatives – a condition I describe as "surveillance realism". In so doing, the article posits a way to reveal the contingency and construction of our current digital environment, advancing a critique suitable for an emancipatory politics. Translated by Philip Di Salvo

Crucial to contemporary debates on political space is a common understanding of changing conditions, not least brought on by developments in communication and media, especially with regards to online activity, that are leading to a spatial 'shift' upwards to the global. This article seeks to contribute to the debate on new media technologies and political space by exploring the way in which space comes to matter in the context of alternative user-generated news sites. Drawing especially on the case of OhmyNews International and the difficulties this site has had with moving from a domestic space to a global space of activity, this article makes the case for a much more comprehensive integration of research into online practices into the often parallel debate on the globalization of politics.

Contents: Labour, Media and Globalisation – Trade Unions, the Labour Movement and the First Wave of Globalisation – Labour and the Second Wave of Globalisation - Digitising the World-System – Social Media, Digital Activism and Labour Movements - Worker Resistance in the New Protest Environment – The Globalising of the Justice for Janitors Movement – Fast Food Forward - From Industrial Power to Public Image – The Domestic Workers Movement - Connecting Informal Labour – Online Labour Activism and State-Corporate Control – Re-Imagining Worker Resistance in the Twenty-First Century.

AbstractBased on a focus on artificial intelligence (AI) policy in the European Union (EU), we explore the dominant approach taken to data justice in policy. More specifically, we ask how the particular issue of discrimination is translated into policy goals and measures as a way to address prominent concerns about AI. Looking at the stage of policy formulation, we provide an analysis of the way (non) discrimination is currently pursued within the EU's AI policy debate through the study of relevant policy documents and public consultations between 2017 and 2023. We argue that whilst the issue of discrimination has moved from the margins to the mainstream in policy debate, it has done so based on an understanding of discrimination as an inevitable risk of AI; such risk is specific to particular situations and the technological features of AI; the nature of this risk can be assessed and managed through a set of procedural safeguards; and such safeguards can be supported by the creation of a trustworthy AI market. Whilst this translation of justice is very important for contending with some of the critique surrounding the advancement of AI, it may also serve to contain and neutralize such critique in the interest of marketization.

The uptake of data-driven hiring systems has introduced important questions about how decisions about who is eligible for jobs, and why, are changing. To explore this, the article draws on interviews with prominent providers of data-driven hiring systems and analyses the way they situate the provision of tools in relation to existing hiring processes, what problems they claim to solve, and the nature of the solutions they provide. While the ideological grounds of datafication have been well-established, privileging data-driven knowledge production as less biased, more objective, and with superior insights than other forms of information-gathering, in hiring, we find legitimisation frames extend to ways in which work and workers should be organised and assessed. Drawing on the notion of 'regimes of justification', we argue that such legitimisation frames in turn invoke certain normative expectations about what is just and unjust organised around a vision of the common good.

References to "European values" are often rooted in some perception of a commitment to particular rights that uphold certain principles about democracy and the relationship between state, market and citizens. Whilst rarely translated into consistent policy frameworks or activities, the formulation of new policy areas, such as artificial intelligence (AI), provide a window into what priorities, interests and concerns currently shape the European project. In this paper, we explore these questions in relation to the recent AI policy debate in the European Union with a particular focus on the place of social rights as a historically pertinent but neglected aspect of policy debates on technology. By examining submissions to the recent public consultation on the White Paper on AI Strategy, we argue that social rights occupy a marginal position in EU's policy debates on emerging technologies in favour of human rights issues such as individual privacy and non-discrimination that are often translated into design solutions or procedural safeguards and a commitment to market creation. This is important as systems such as AI are playing an increasingly important role for questions of redistribution and economic inequality that relate to social rights. As such, the AI policy debate both exposes and advances new normative conflicts over the meaning of rights as a central component of any attachment to "European values".

Both vehemently protected and attacked in equal measure, the welfare state as an idea and as a policy agenda remains as relevant as ever. It refers not only to a program of social welfare and the provision of social services, but also to a model of the state and the economy. According to Offe (1984), the welfare state in advanced capitalist economies is a formula that consists of the explicit obligation of the state apparatus to provide assistance and support to those citizens who suffer from specific needs and risks characteristic of the market society, and it is based on a recognition of the formal role of labor unions in both collective bargaining and the formation of public policy. Although actively dismantled in recent decades as globalization and neoliberalism have taken hold of much of the modern world-system, its future continues to be fought over. It serves as a model for society that is seen to privilege a commitment to decommodification, universal access, and social solidarity as a way to overcome the most prominent contradictions of capitalism. A product of the twinned global crises of the Great Depression and the Second World War, the modern welfare state therefore encapsulates a moment of political and economic settlement, a mechanism of stabilization that arguably could emerge only out of such crises.

The Snowden leaks provided unprecedented insights into the workings of state-corporate surveillance programs based on the interception and collection of online activity. They illustrated the extent of "bulk" data collection and the general and widespread monitoring of everyday communication platforms used by ordinary citizens. Yet public response in the United Kingdom and elsewhere has been considerably muted, and there has been little evidence of public outcry, with often conflicting and inconsistent opinions on the subject. Based on research carried out for the project Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society, this article explores the nuances of public attitudes toward surveillance, including such attitudes among politically active citizens, through focus groups and interviews. We argue that the lack of transparency, knowledge, and control over what happens to personal data online has led to feelings of widespread resignation, not consent, to the status quo that speaks to a condition we identify as "surveillance realism." We understand this to entail a simultaneous unease among citizens with data collection alongside the active normalization of surveillance that limits the possibilities of enacting modes of citizenship and of imagining alternatives.

The revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have illustrated the scale and extent of digital surveillance carried out by different security and intelligence agencies. The publications have led to a variety of concerns, public debate, and some diplomatic fallout regarding the legality of the surveillance, the extent of state interference in civic life, and the protection of civil rights in the context of security. Debates about the policy environment of surveillance emerged quickly after the leaks began, but actual policy change is only starting. In the UK, a draft law (Investigatory Powers Bill) has been proposed and is currently discussed. In this paper, we will trace the forces and dynamics that have shaped this particular policy response. Addressing surveillance policy as a site of struggle between different social forces and drawing on different fields across communication policy research, we suggest eight dynamics that, often in conflicting ways, have shaped the regulatory framework of surveillance policy in the UK since the Snowden leaks. These include the governmental context; national and international norms; court rulings; civil society advocacy; technical standards; private sector interventions; media coverage; and public opinion. We investigate how state surveillance has been met with criticism by parts of the technology industry and civil society, and that policy change was required as a result of legal challenges, review commissions and normative interventions. However a combination of specific government compositions, the strong role of security agendas and discourses, media justification and a muted reaction by the public have hindered a more fundamental review of surveillance practices so far and have moved policy debate towards the expansion, rather than the restriction, of surveillance in the aftermath of Snowden.

Data justice has emerged as a key framework for engaging with the intersection of datafication and society in a way that privileges an explicit concern with social justice. Engaging with justice concerns in the analysis of information and communication systems is not in itself new, but the concept of data justice has been used to denote a shift in understanding of what is at stake with datafication beyond digital rights. In this essay, we trace the lineage and outline some of the different traditions and approaches through which the concept is currently finding expression. We argue that in doing so, we are confronted with tensions that denote a politics of data justice both in terms of what is at stake with datafication and what might be suitable responses.

Debates on the temporal shift associated with digitalization often stress notions of speed and acceleration. With the advent of big data and predictive analytics, the time-compressing features of digitalization are compounded within a distinct operative logic: that of pre-emption. The temporality of pre-emption attempts to project the past into a simulated future that can be acted upon in the present; a temporality of pure imminence. Yet, inherently paradoxical, pre-emption is marked by myriads of contrasts and frictions as it is caught between the supposedly all-encompassing knowledge of the data-processing 'Machine', and the daily reality of decision-making practices by relevant social actors. In this article, we explore the contrasting temporalities of automated data processing and predictive analytics, using policing as an illustrative example. Drawing on insights from two cases of predictive policing systems that have been implemented among UK police forces, we highlight the prevalence of counter-temporalities as predictive analytics is situated in institutional contexts and consider the conditions of possibility for agency and deliberation. Analysing these temporal tensions in relation to 'slowness' as a mode of resistance, the contextual examination of predictive policing advanced in the article provides a contribution to the formation of a deeper awareness of the politics of time in automated data processing; one that may serve to counter the imperative of pre-emption that, taken to the limit, seeks to foreclose the time for politics, action and life.

Digital media enable processes of datafication: users' online activities leave digital traces that are transformed into data points in databases, kept by service providers and other private and public organisations, and repurposed for commercial exploitation, business innovation, surveillance -- and research. Increasingly, this also extends to sensors and recognition technologies that turn homes and cities, as well as our own bodies, into data points to be collected and analysed So-called 'traditional' media industries, too, including public service broadcasting, have been datafied, tracking and profiling audiences, algorithmically processing data for greater personalisation as a way to compete with new players and streaming services. Datafication both raises new research questions and brings about new avenues, and an array of tools, for empirical research. This special issue is dedicated to exploring these, linking them to broader historical trajectories of social science methodologies as well as to central concerns and perspectives in media and communication research. As such, this special issue grapples with approaches to empirical research that interlink questions of methods and tools with epistemology and practice. It discusses the datafication of methods, as well as methods for studying datafication. With this we hope to enable reflection of what research questions media and communication scholars should ask of datafication, and how new and existing methods enable us to answer them.