Suchergebnisse

The use of algorithms to mine big data for media preferences presents a transformation in the structure of the public sphere that is amplifying the tyranny of the majority. Whereas previous scholarship has lamented the fragmentation of the public sphere caused by the use of big data to inform audience analysis and media production, I argue here that fragmentation itself is not an implicitly bad thing for public debate, as fragmentation can encourage participation from the otherwise disempowered. Instead, I suggest that the use of big data to inform media production causes problems in the public sphere not because it fragments public debate, but because it somewhat paradoxically recentres public engagement around the complementary interests of the broad majority and profitability. The problem for public engagement is not that there are no overarching or all-encompassing media structures anymore but rather that these systems are informed by algorithms that promote a particularly populist 'profitable and normal' media experience.

"Media pervade and saturate the world around us. From the proliferation of social media, to crowdsourcing, big data, games, and more traditional media such as television, radio, and print, media provide the framework for our engagement with the world and each other. By recasting the traditional concerns of media studies through the lens of the work of Deleuze and Guattari this book provides an innovative new toolkit for understanding how media shape our world. Taking as their central question what it is that media do, Harper and Savat offer a new and insightful approach to this exciting area of study."--Bloomsbury Publishing

AbstractThe media's central role in the policy process has long been recognised, with policy scholars noting the potential for news media to influence policy change. However, scholars have paid most attention to the news media as a conduit for the agendas, frames, and preferences of other policy actors. Recently, scholars have more closely examined media actors directly contributing to policy change. This paper presents a case study to argue that specific members of the media may display the additional skills and behaviours that characterise policy entrepreneurship. Our case study focuses on mandatory childhood vaccination in Australia, following the entrepreneurial actions of a deputy newspaper editor and her affiliated outlets. Mandatory childhood vaccination policies have grown in strength and number in recent years across the industrialised world in response to parents refusing to vaccinate their children. Australia's federal and state governments have been at the forefront of meeting vaccine refusal with harsh consequences; our case study demonstrates how media actors conceived and advanced these policies. The experiences, skills, attributes, and strategies of Sunday Telegraph Deputy Editor Claire Harvey facilitated her policy entrepreneurship, utilising many classic hallmarks from the literature and additional opportunities offered by her media role. Harvey also subverted the classic pathway of entrepreneurship, mobilising the public ahead of policymakers to force the latter's hand.

AbstractThis article explores why governments do not respond to public compliance problems in a timely manner with appropriate instruments, and the consequences of their failure to do so. Utilising a case study of Italian vaccination policy, the article considers counterfactuals and the challenges of governing health policy in an age of disinformation. It counterposes two methods of governing vaccination compliance: discipline, which uses public institutions to inculcate the population with favourable attitudes and practices, and modulation, which uses access to public institutions as a form of control. The Italian government ineffectively employed discipline for a number of years. Epistemological and organisational constraints stymied its efforts to tackle a significant childhood vaccination compliance problem. With a loss of control over the information environment, vaccinations were not served well by exogenous crises, the sensationalism of the news cycle and online misinformation. Hampered by austerity, lack of capacity and epistemic shortcomings, the Italian government did not protect the public legitimacy of the vaccination programme. Instead of employing communications to reassure a hesitant population, they focused on systemic and delivery issues, until it was too late to do anything except make vaccinations mandatory (using modulation). The apparent short-term success of this measure in generating population compliance does not foreclose the need for ongoing governance of vaccine confidence through effective discipline. This is evident for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with many Italians still indicating that they would not accept a vaccine despite the devastation that the disease has wrought throughout their country.

This article explores why governments do not respond to public compliance problems in a timely manner with appropriate instruments, and the consequences of their failure to do so. Utilising a case study of Italian vaccination policy, the article considers counterfactuals and the challenges of governing health policy in an age of disinformation. It counterposes two methods of governing vaccination compliance: discipline, which uses public institutions to inculcate the population with favourable attitudes and practices, and modulation, which uses access to public institutions as a form of control. The Italian government ineffectively employed discipline for a number of years. Epistemological and organisational constraints stymied its efforts to tackle a significant childhood vaccination compliance problem. With a loss of control over the information environment, vaccinations were not served well by exogenous crises, the sensationalism of the news cycle and online misinformation. Hampered by austerity, lack of capacity and epistemic shortcomings, the Italian government did not protect the public legitimacy of the vaccination programme. Instead of employing communications to reassure a hesitant population, they focused on systemic and delivery issues, until it was too late to do anything except make vaccinations mandatory (using modulation). The apparent short-term success of this measure in generating population compliance does not foreclose the need for ongoing governance of vaccine confidence through effective discipline. This is evident for the COVID-19 vaccination campaign, with many Italians still indicating that they would not accept a vaccine despite the devastation that the disease has wrought throughout their country.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: Deleuze and New Technology -- CONTROL -- Chapter 1 Deleuze and Machines: A Politics of Technology? -- Chapter 2 Of Rhizomes, Smooth Space, War Machines and New Media -- Chapter 3 Deleuze's Objectile: From Discipline to Modulation -- Chapter 4 How to Surf: Technologies at Work in the Societies of Control -- Chapter 5 Chemical-Control™®: From the Cane to the Pill -- Chapter 6 Politics in the Age of Control -- BECOMING -- Chapter 7 Smash the Strata! A Programme for Techno-Political ®evolution -- Chapter 8 Deleuze and the Internet -- Chapter 9 Swarming: Number versus Animal? -- Chapter 10 The Body Without Organs and Internet Gaming Addiction -- Chapter 11 Deleuze's Concept in the Information- Control Continuum -- Chapter 12 Illusionary Perception and Cinema: Experimental Thoughts on Film Theory and Neuroscience -- Chapter 13 Surface Folds: The Archival Events of New Medialised Art -- Afterword -- Notes on Contributors -- Index