Summary New media studies all lessons + notes + main texts (2020)
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Course
New Media Studies
Institution
Universiteit Gent (UGent)
Summary of all lessons, including lesson notes, clarification through the texts on ufora as well as clarification by other online sources. The result is a bundle that provides enough information to be able to perform the oral exam well and to know what you are talking about!
NEW MEDIA STUDIES
EX: PLEASE READ THE READING MATERIALS + KNOW THE ACTUA ABOUT TECHNOLOGY & ICT
PLENARY SESSIONS OF CHALLENGES = EXAM MATERIAL
Class 1: introduction and theoretical perspectives on technology and society
Macroperspective – looking at the societal impact & perspective
You shouldn’t be surprised that you’re targeted by certain specific ads
what do we think of using personalized ads on TV?
- Social dynamics in the home context that you don’t have behind the computer
- No privacy left, it’s creepy
- If random ads disappear, we won’t be interested in buying random things anymore
Problem: lower income for commercial broadcasting because of delayed/online viewing
Solution: implementing online targeted advertising in television context
Societal issues/ relfections?
- Privacy
- Opt-in versus opt-out
- Filter bubble
Poster of Chicago world’s fair, developments and inventions that changed the
world.
slogan: ‘science finds, industry applies, and man adapts’.
Images of Arabic Spring: movement that escalated through social media.
Mark Zuckerberg mission statement = positive, to create an open and
connected world
we see this same ‘positive’ discourse again and again from tech giants, but
in reality, these tech giants are slowly being seen as the enemy
Figure: house with different cameras. This shows how your household should work.
e.g. watching the babysitter through a camera while parents are gone.
It’s illustrative of how engineers think of social reality. This is not necessarily the way
in which it operates in reality
Tech is seen as something influencing our living directly, and it’s not really
questioned (enough)
These images (ppt dia 14) have in common:
- Monocausal way of thinking
- Technological determinism: Proposes that technology is the driving force in
developing the structure of society and culture
- Social determinism (other side of the spectrum): proposes that factors in society
create specific uses of technology. Social norms, attitudes, cultural practices, and
religious beliefs are directly impacting how technology is used and what its social
consequences are.
1
, Example. Facebook is not an open system that makes us more social and open, rather
it is a manifestation of a neo-liberal system that exploits its users (= social
deterministic, dystopian).
The truth is somewhere in the middle, society and technology mutually influence each
other mutual shaping: technology influences society, society influences tech
Structure vs. agency:
- Structure: society = independent entity that influences how humans act, think & feel
- Agency: more emphasis on humans, their actions & especially the meaning they
assign to those actions
We should treat social media as networked publics:
“Spaces constructed through networked technologies; and imagined communities that
emerge as a result of the intersection of people, technology and practice” (Marwick & boyd,
2014 p.1052).
interactionist perspective:
- Emphasis on identity
- Affordances & dynamics
agentic way of looking at social media
Pigs talking about the ‘free model’: they don’t realize that
they’re the product themselves and they’re being exploited.
a lot of critical scholars use this image to show how people
are being ‘exploited’ by technology extensive
commodification.
Social media as ‘extensive communication’
“Social networking sites are especially suited for targeted
advertising because they store and communicate a vast
amount of personal likes and dislikes of users that allow
surveillance of these data for economic purposes, finding out which products the users are
likely to buy. This explains why targeted advertising is the main source of income and the
business model of most profit-oriented social networking sites” (Fuchs, 2011 p.148).
Political economic perspective:
- Emphasis on economic aspects
- Double commodification
Networked publics vs. commodification
- Social media as networked publics what about structure?
- Social media as commodification what about agency?
Theories of technology & society
Classic vision on technological innovation linearity!
- Fundamental research applied research technological development product
development product development production usage
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,Theories of technology & society:
Determinism: Autonomous (-structure) and neutrality (separation of means and ends)
Any technology that’s realized, is seen as progress of the entire human race. Tech propels
humans forward. Society's technology determines the development of its social structure
and cultural values
Instrumentalism (liberal faith in progress): human controlled (-agency) and neutrality
(separation of means and ends) assumption that all technologies are mere tools,
deployed by humans for various ends. Humans control the tools and their effects. We have
biases in technology, but big tech companies are using the instrumentalist view say that AI
isn’t biased, but people are.
Substantivism: value-laden (means for way of life that includes ends) and autonomous (-
structure) Substantivism argues that technology influences how society develops and
impacts our political systems, culture and social structure. ... The technology has its own
values which can be good or bad which people cannot control and the technology itself will
determine how it will be used.
Critical theory: tech is product of both technological and societal factors, tech will embody
the values of the social elite, there is human agency, but tech is also value-laden and human-
controlled (-agency).
Example: guns don’t kill ppl, ppl kill ppl
instrumentalism
Class 1: Privacy & surveillance pt. I
Pew research center: looks at American lives, sometimes focuses on technology.
They asked: ‘How do you envision privacy in the future?’
‘living the public life is the new default’
‘transparency will replace privacy as the social norm and ideal’
‘privacy is a passing artefact of the industrial age’
The way that these experts are thinking about privacy is very negative and kind of dystopian.
1. Privacy, a conceptualization: from ‘individual’ to ‘context’ to ‘network’
Individual (Warren & Brandeis)
“Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of
private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the
prediction that ‘what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops”
privacy as ‘the right to be let alone’: fundamental human right perspective on privacy
3
, Right to be forgotten
- Online: ‘right to be let alone’ … ‘right to be forgotten’
- General data protection regulation (GDPR)
- Tensions between privacy and freedom of speech, censorship etc
‘Right to be forgotten’: good thing? If you were to erase everything that happens in society,
you could have a very negative effect.
Individual (Westin)
“Privacy is the claim of individuals, groups, or institutions to determine for themselves when,
how, and to what extent information about them is communicated to others” (Westin, 1967,
p. 7).
Privacy is seen as information control
very instrumental way to look at privacy (to achieve personal autonomy, emotional
relationships, self reflection)
Context (Altman)
“Privacy as the selective control of access to the self” (Altman, 1975, p.24)
privacy as information control, but with a focus on the environment where the disclosure
takes place
Unlimited sharing as a privacy strategy
“In a world in which posting updates is common, purposeful, and performative, sharing often allows teens to
control a social situation more than simply opting out. It also guarantees that others can’t define the social
situation. Sitting in an afterschool program in Los Angeles, I casually asked a teen participant why she shared so
many embarrassing photos of herself on her profile. She laughed and told me that it was a lot safer if she
shared her photos and put them in context by what she wrote than if she did not because she knew that her
friends also had embarrassing photos. They’d be happy to embarrass her if she let them. But by taking
preemptive action and mocking herself by writing dismissive messages on photos that could be interpreted
problematically, she undermined her friends’ ability to define the situation differently. After explaining her logic,
she continued on to explain how her apparent exhibitionism left plenty of room for people to not focus in on the
things that were deeply intimate in her life.”
Communication privacy management theory (CPM) privacy as a ‘negotiation process’
Rules:
- People believe they own and have a right to control their private information.
- People control their private information through the use of personal privacy rules.
- When others are told or given access to a person’s private information, they become
co-owners of that information.
- Co-owners of private information need to negotiate mutually agreeable privacy rules
about telling others.
- When co-owners of private information don’t effectively negotiate and follow
mutually held privacy rules, boundary turbulence is likely to happen.
privacy management: don’t just look at privacy as information control, but look at how
others are also involved in this privacy control process.
CPM doesn’t really have a clear context in mind beforehand.
Facebook police = scanned everyone’s profile and looked for photo’s that could give a bad
reputation to youth organisations privacy is highly dependent of other ppl
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