The social power of algorithms

ABSTRACT

This article explores the questions associated with what might be thought of as the social power of algorithms. The article, which introduces a special issue on the same topic, begins by reflecting on how we might approach algorithms from a social scientific perspective. The article is then split into two sections. The first deals with the issues that might be associated with an analysis of the power of the algorithms themselves. This section outlines a series of issues associated with the functionality of the algorithms and how these functions are powerfully deployed within social world. The second section then focuses upon the notion of the algorithm. In this section, the article argues that we need to look beyond the algorithms themselves, as a technical and material presence, to explore how the notion or concept of the algorithm is also an important feature of their potential power. In this section, it is suggested that we look at the way that notions of the algorithm are evoked as a part of broader rationalities and ways of seeing the world. Exploring the notion of the algorithm may enable us to see how algorithms also play a part in social ordering processes, both in terms of how the algorithm is used to promote certain visions of calculative objectivity and also in relation to the wider governmentalities that this concept might be used to open up.     

Emotions,affects and the production of social life

While many aspects of social life possess an emotional component, sociology needs to explore explicitly the part emotions play in producing the social world and human history. This paper turns away from individualistic and anthropocentric emphases upon the experience of feelings and emotions, attending instead to an exploration of flows of ‘affect’ (meaning simply a capacity to affect or be affected) between bodies, things, social institutions and abstractions. It establishes a materialist sociology of affects that acknowledges emotions as a part, but only a part, of a more generalized affective flow that produces bodies and the social world. From this perspective, emotions are not a peculiarly remarkable outcome of the confluence of biology and culture, but part of a continuum of affectivity that links human bodies to their physical and social environment. This enhances sociological understanding of the part emotions play in shaping actions and capacities in many settings of sociological concern.     

Mapping social dynamics on Facebook: The Brexit debate

Nowadays users get informed and shape their opinion through social media. However, the disintermediated access to contents does not guarantee quality of information. Selective exposure and confirmation bias, indeed, have been shown to play a pivotal role in content consumption and information spreading. Users tend to select information adhering (and reinforcing) their worldview and to ignore dissenting information. This pattern elicits the formation of polarized groups – i.e., echo chambers – where the interaction with like-minded people might even reinforce polarization. In this work we address news consumption around Brexit in UK on Facebook. In particular, we perform a massive analysis on more than 1 million users interacting with Brexit related posts from the main news providers between January and July 2016. We show that consumption patterns elicit the emergence of two distinct communities of news outlets. Furthermore, to better characterize inner group dynamics, we introduce a new technique which combines automatic topic extraction and sentiment analysis. We compare how the same topics are presented on posts and the related emotional response on comments finding significant differences in both echo chambers and that polarization influences the perception of topics. Our results provide important insights about the determinants of polarization and evolution of core narratives on online debating.     

Participant recruitment and data collection through Facebook: the role of personality factors

As participant recruitment and data collection over the Internet have become more common, numerous observers have expressed concern regarding the validity of research conducted in this fashion. One growing method of conducting research over the Internet involves recruiting participants and administering questionnaires over Facebook, the world’s largest social networking service. If Facebook is to be considered a viable platform for social research, it is necessary to demonstrate that Facebook users are sufficiently heterogeneous and that research conducted through Facebook is likely to produce results that can be generalized to a larger population. The present study examines these questions by comparing demographic and personality data collected over Facebook with data collected through a standalone website, and data collected from college undergraduates at two universities. Results indicate that statistically significant differences exist between Facebook data and the comparison data-sets, but since 80% of analyses exhibited partial η^2?相似文献   

Three dimensions of the public sphere on Facebook

The article provides an empirical analysis of the online public sphere in the three dimensions introduced by Dahlgren (2005): structural, representational and interactional. The main subject of analysis is the largest social networking site – Facebook – and Polish users’ activity on the Facebook Pages of political parties and politicians. The researchers analysed data about all users active on those Pages during two 4-month periods in 2013 and 2015. The results of the study show that only a small fraction of Facebook users are active in public political discussions that take place on political Facebook Pages (structural dimension). However, the level of engagement depends on the current political events taking place within the public sphere offline, and users are more active during electoral campaigns. Moreover, Facebook does not provide an alternative public sphere for political actors that are less present in mainstream media. Parties and politicians that are visible in traditional media are also attracting active fans in social media (representational dimension). Nonetheless, non-parliamentary groups have more active fans than would result only from their popularity in mainstream media. Finally, the online public on Facebook is fragmented and clustered into homogenous political groups (interactional dimension), thus supporting the hypothesis on ‘echo chambers’ presented by Sunstein (2001). The divisions are smaller when there are significantly more users involved. However, most of these cross-cutting links are the result of the electoral campaign.     

Reassessing the Facebook experiment: critical thinking about the validity of Big Data research

The Facebook experiment of 2014 manipulated the contents of nearly 700,000 users’ News Feeds to induce changes in their emotions. This experiment was widely criticized on ethical grounds regarding informed consent. This controversy, however, diverted attention from a more important concern the experiment was intended to address, which is the impact of Facebook use on well-being. In this paper, I explore the well-being concerns raised by prior research and argue that the experiment does not alleviate them, owing to poor research design. As the question of Facebook's impact on well-being is of great importance, both to Facebook and to society overall, there is a pressing need for more experimental research that is both sensitive to informed consent and carefully designed to yield reliable results. In turn, the lessons of this case have implications for general issues of validity that emerge in Big Data research, now in vogue at major scientific venues.     

Responding to a Health Crisis on Facebook: The Effects of Response Timing and Message Appeal

This study examined the effects of timing and message appeal of a crisis response on organizational perceptions and behavioral intentions on social media. Using a health crisis scenario, a 3 (one hour vs. one day vs. one week after the crisis) × 2 (emotional vs. rational appeal) between-subjects experiment (N = 502) found that a crisis response posted one day after the crisis on Facebook elicited greater trust towards the hospital in crisis compared to a response posted in one week. The one-hour response and one-day response did not show differential effects on trust towards the hospital. The effect of timing was mediated by perceived credibility of the crisis response. In addition, the emotional appeal triggered greater trust, perception of reputation, and intention to “like” the post; whereas the rational appeal elicited greater intention to share and comment on the post. The study provides both theoretical and practical implications.     

Scrutinizing an algorithmic technique: the Bayes classifier as interested reading of reality

ABSTRACT

This paper outlines the notion of ‘algorithmic technique’ as a middle ground between concrete, implemented algorithms and the broader study and theorization of software. Algorithmic techniques specify principles and methods for doing things in the medium of software and they thus constitute units of knowledge and expertise in the domain of software making. I suggest that algorithmic techniques are a suitable object of study for the humanities and social science since they capture the central technical principles behind actual software, but can generally be described in accessible language. To make my case, I focus on the field of information ordering and, first, discuss the wider historical trajectory of formal or ‘mechanical’ reasoning applied to matters of commerce and government before, second, moving to the investigation of a particular algorithmic technique, the Bayes classifier. This technique is explicated through a reading of the original work of M. E. Maron in the early 1960 and presented as a means to subject empirical, ‘datafied’ reality to an interested reading that confers meaning to each variable in relation to an operational goal. After a discussion of the Bayes classifier in relation to the question of power, the paper concludes by coming back to its initial motive and argues for increased attention to algorithmic techniques in the study of software.     

Writing birthing bodies: exploring the entanglements between flesh and materiality in childbirth

ABSTRACT

This article enquires into the lived experiences of childbirth as a site of ‘fleshy becomings’ that disrupts the dominantly cleaned-up approaches to organising. Theoretically, we approach childbirth as a primitively humane experience in which birthing bodies become entangled with the materiality by which they are surrounded. The empirical material of the article consists of 12 in-depth interviews with first-time mothers in Finland as well as of photographs and autoethnographic research notes taken by the two authors of this article. By empirically highlighting the interplay between flesh and materiality in the ‘making’ of birthing bodies, this article offers novel viewpoints on the discussion of embodied experiences as well as on the entangled relations between flesh and materiality in the field of organisation studies. It also makes an empirical contribution using a unique contextual example of ‘birthing’ to illustrate how vulnerable topics can be researched, offering critical viewpoints on this subject.     

The power elite and elite-driven countermovements: The associated farmers of california during the 1930s

The involvement of the power elite in social movements has been a neglected area of research. The investigation of elites has generally been limited to that of local elites, political parties, and philanthropic foundations, and their involvement in social movements is believed limited to resource support (either to further or deter the progress of an insurgent social movement) or the institutional obstruction or facilitation of the movement. I contend that under specific conditions, the power elite may become active mobilizers, leaders, and supporters of countermovements (movements to deter insurgent movements). These conditions arise during periods of heightened insurgent movement activity and when the efficacy of institutional channels to safeguard or advance the interests of the power elite is reduced. This is illustrated in the case of the Associated Farmers of California, Inc., a countermovement aimed at interfering with and obstructing the attempts of farmworkers to strike and unionize during the 1930s by enlisting citizens and citizen groups as anti-unionization shock troops. It also opposed New Deal policies and legislation. The mobilization of nonelites into the Associated Farmers originated in and was carried out by agricultural and industrial elite of California to advance their own interests. Citizens allied with the Associated Farmers either because of ideological alignment with their goals or dependence on their economic activities. The theoretical ramifications of this example will be explored.     

#IAmNotAfraidToSayIt: stories of sexual violence as everyday political speech on Facebook

ABSTRACT

The debate about the power and influence of networked publics often focuses on large-scale political events, activist campaigns and protest activity – the more visible forms of political engagement. On the other hand, digitally mediated activism is often questioned and sometimes derided as a lesser form of dissent, as it is easier to engage in, highly affective, and offers few assurances of sustainability of the change it calls for. But what about everyday political speech online, where social media platforms can contribute to a personalisation of politics? Can social media users express their views online and make a difference? This paper analyses around 3500 Facebook posts stemming from the #ЯНеБоюсьСказати (Ukrainian for #IAmNotAfraidToSayIt) online campaign that was started in the Ukrainian segment of Facebook in July 2016 by a local activist to raise awareness of how widespread sexual violence and sexual harassment are in the Ukrainian society. The paper argues that networked conversations about everyday rights and affective stories about shared experiences of injustice, underpinned by the affordances of social media platforms for sharing and discussing information and participating in everyday politics, can emerge as viable forms of networked feminist activism and can have real impact on the discursive status quo of an issue, both in the digital sphere and beyond it.     

From Face-to-Face to Facebook: The Role of Technology and Social Media in Adoptive Family Relationships with Birth Family Members

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study of 77 individuals in 40 couples (same-sex and heterosexual), who had adopted publically, privately, or internationally, examined parents' engagement with their child's birth family via technology (e.g., texting, e-mail, social media) through the lens of the Couple and Family Technology frame-work (Hertlein & Blumer, 2014 Hertlein, K. M., & Blumer, M. L. C. (2014). The couple and family technology framework. New York, NY: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). Parents used three approaches to contact: active, passive, and no contact. Regardless of approach, some parents described concerns about boundaries. Couples were generally in agreement in their perspectives on engaging with birth family via technology. Practitioners must be know-ledgeable about management of relationships via technology and help adoptive families set healthy boundaries.     

Facebook Bras and #digitalharems: Fantasies of Mimesis and the Transgressions of Aliaa Elmahdy and Amina Sboui

Abstract

This article presents a horizontal reading of Aliaa Elmahdy's and Amina Sboui's corporeal interventions alongside the efficacy of digital platforms in order to consider how algorithmic and normative protocols related to content filtering on social media amplify certain forms of political communication while prohibiting others. I argue that readings of Elmahdy's and Sboui's bodily politics through the lens of liberal feminism rely on what I call discourses of mimetic networking, where particular mediated events become reterritorialized as part of an archival knowledge of ‘Arabness’. This is done through the organization of data via hashtagging and content moderation, and through rhetorics of techno-optimism that mirror ‘first contact’ narratives which gender, racialize, and flatten complex and fluid engagements with new media in non-US/European contexts. The article concludes with a consideration of how the persistence of their corporeality relays with both normative and programmatic parameters online to make alternative visions of communication possible.     

Disciplining the sex ratio: exploring the governmentality of female foeticide in India

The ‘girl child’ has attracted a considerable amount of attention in India as an object of policy addressing gender discrimination. This article examines the field of campaigns seeking to address female foeticide and positions the public discourse on the ‘girl child’ and sex selective abortion in India within a broad cultural backdrop of son preference. The article argues that anti-female foeticide campaigns exist within a disciplinary domain of female foeticide which both generates a discourse of saving the ‘girl child’ and also shows attempts to utilise both incentives and punitive measures in carving out a female foeticide carceral space.     

Rural social work The perceptions and experiences of five remote practitioners

Abstract

Living and working as a remote, rural social worker is a challenging experience. This qualitative study explores the experiences of five longer-term social workers in rural Western Australia. It provides a glimpse of their world including initial experiences, factors which support long-term rural practice, the demands and skills needed, the difficulties working in a bureaucracy and the positive aspects of rural practice. Tentative conclusions indicate that rural practice is distinct, due to the demands of living and working in the same community. Moreover, skills must be applied in the context of few secondary referral points or after hours services, and huge distances. The difficulty of maintaining professional identity and feelings of personal isolation are significant, but are compensated for by families who are settled and reluctant to leave, These findings can be used to inform social work education and improve retention of workers and quality of rural practice.     

The Emotions of Protest: Affective and Reactive Emotions In and Around Social Movements

The recent explosion of cultural work on social movements has been highly cognitive in its orientation, as though researchers were still reluctant to admit that strong emotions accompany protest. But such emotions do not render protestors irrational; emotions accompany all social action, providing both motivation and goals. Social movements are affected by transitory, context-specific emotions, usually reactions to information and events, as well as by more stable affective bonds and loyalties. Some emotions exist or arise in individuals before they join protest groups; others are formed or reinforced in collective action itself. The latter type can be further divided into shared and reciprocal emotions, the latter being feelings that protestors have toward each other.     

Real social analytics: A contribution towards a phenomenology of a digital world

This article argues against the assumption that agency and reflexivity disappear in an age of ‘algorithmic power’ (Lash 2007). Following the suggestions of Beer (2009), it proposes that, far from disappearing, new forms of agency and reflexivity around the embedding in everyday practice of not only algorithms but also analytics more broadly are emerging, as social actors continue to pursue their social ends but mediated through digital interfaces: this is the consequence of many social actors now needing their digital presence, regardless of whether they want this, to be measured and counted. The article proposes ‘social analytics’ as a new topic for sociology: the sociological study of social actors’ uses of analytics not for the sake of measurement itself (or to make profit from measurement) but in order to fulfil better their social ends through an enhancement of their digital presence. The article places social analytics in the context of earlier debates about categorization, algorithmic power, and self‐presentation online, and describes in detail a case study with a UK community organization which generated the social analytics approach. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of this approach for further sociological fieldwork in a digital world.     

Reconceptualising refugee education: exploring the diverse learning contexts of unaccompanied young refugees upon resettlement

Abstract

This article explores unaccompanied young refugees’ participation in various learning contexts beyond school. Drawing from a qualitative study based on interviews with unaccompanied young refugees, educators and social workers in Norway, the findings emphasise the need for a holistic approach to refugee education in and across contexts of learning. The refugees originate from countries where access to formal schooling was difficult or disrupted. Many of them have been exposed to traumatic events prior to arrival. As the educational and psychosocial needs of resettled refugees are diverse and complex, it is unlikely that schools are able to meet them all. Participation in diverse settings, activities and practices beyond school may expand young refugees’ opportunities for meaningful learning as well as promote their social inclusion. Facilitating access to adequate learning contexts, along with supporting their own commitment to succeed, is decisive for young refugees’ educational achievement, psychosocial adjustment and inclusion in society. The paper emphasises the need for reconceptualising refugee education as inclusive of diverse learning contexts in and outside of school. Enhanced collaboration between schools, local community organisations and wider society will facilitate and support resettling young refugees’ opportunities to achieve their fullest potential.     

Why the paradigm of work–family conflict is no longer sustainable: Towards more empowering social imaginaries to understand women's identities

The paradigm of work–family conflict is challenged by the fluid realities of the actual world. Through an innovative phenomenographic study of women's understanding of their lives, we show that the social imaginary of work–family conflict assumes that vulnerability is a constitutive reality for women. Consequently, with respect to the perspectives through which women are invited to make sense of their lives, the metaphor of conflict enforces a worldview based on traditional gender roles. Organizational policies that rely heavily on a social imaginary of work–family conflict may prove ineffective. On the one hand, they ignore the diversity of morphologies and vocabularies used by women today to understand themselves in relation to their family and workplace. On the other, work–family conflict arises as a product of policy measures and bureaucratic practices rather than as an experiential reality. Policy statements on work–family conflict have a performative character: they communicate a message about women's social status and identity. Therefore, effective organizational policies should integrate vocabularies and assumptions that make women aware of themselves in a confident manner by relying on social imaginaries that encourage agency and empowered participation in the world.     

Open media or echo chamber: the use of links in audience discussions on the Facebook Pages of partisan news organizations

This study evaluates the use of hyperlinks in audience discussions on the Facebook Pages of two partisan cable news organizations: the liberal-leaning Rachel Maddow Show and the conservative O'Reilly Factor, to investigate to what extent linking might intensify partisan political discussion or infuse a variety of perspectives into online communication. The results suggest that these Facebook audiences show a preference for a small group of information resources; furthermore, the two audiences shared an even smaller number of information resources in common. The findings support previous research that suggests a relatively small number of information resources receive most of the news audience traffic, and provide some support for other studies that indicate that partisan political discussions on social media are segregated by political orientation.