http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc hourly 1 1901-01-01T00:00+00:00 http://gmane.org/img/gmane-25t.png http://gmane.org http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2393 <pre>Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory Edited by Trebor Scholz Digital Labor asks whether life on the internet is mostly work, or play. We tweet, we tag photos, we link, we review books, we comment on blogs, we remix media, and we upload video to create much of the content that makes up the web. And large corporations profit on our online activity by tracking our interests, affiliations, and habits—and then collecting and selling the data. What is the nature of this interactive ‘labor’ and the new forms of digital sociality that it brings into being? The international, interdisciplinary contributors to Digital Labor suggest that there is no longer a clear divide between ‘the personal’ and ‘work,’ as every aspect of life drives the digital economy: sexual desire, boredom, friendship—and all become fodder for speculative profit. They argue that we are living in a total labor society and the way in which we are commoditized, racialized, and engendered is profoundly and disturbin</pre> Trebor Scholz 2012-09-26T21:45:49 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2392 <pre>Fuchs, Christian. 2012. New Marxian Times! Reflections on the 4th ICTs and Society Conference “Critique, Democracy and Philosophy in 21st Century Information Society. Towards Critical Theories of Social Media”. tripleC – Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society 10 (1): 114-121. http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/article/view/411 _______________________________________________ iDC -- mailing list of the Institute for Distributed Creativity (distributedcreativity.org) iDC&lt; at &gt;mailman.thing.net https://mailman.thing.net/mailman/listinfo/idc List Archive: http://mailman.thing.net/pipermail/idc/ iDC Photo Stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/idcnetwork/ RSS feed: http://rss.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc iDC Chat on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2457237647 Share relevant URLs on Del.icio.us by adding the tag iDCref</pre> Christian Fuchs 2012-05-06T20:17:20 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2391 <pre>Congratulations to Trebor and the entire Situated Technologies team! This is an impressive effort of public education, using socialized resources and undoubtedly, much passionate volunteer labor, to generate new knowledge and distribute it freely to all those who want to understand and change the contemporary world. I hope these pdf books will be widely used. The generosity of the project is evident from the first download. Thanks for all your efforts, Brian On 04/29/2012 09:06 AM, Trebor Scholz wrote: </pre> Brian Holmes 2012-05-02T17:01:07 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2390 <pre>Hello iDC'ers...are you still out there? I am writing to share an archival document that may hold some historical interest for those who study and critique media. In 1974, Ontario's public broadcaster (OECA) launched a unique experiment in live broadcasting and media criticism. Media Circus was 90-minutes of live commercial-free analysis of 'what is on TV right now', with the 'set' being the TV control room where the show itself was being produced. Until recently it was believed that no recordings of this groundbreaking TV series existed, but recently a copy of the first episode came into my hands. I was particularly happy to see it because my father, Ken Sobol, was one of the creators and hosts of Media Circus. And I have now uploaded the first 30 minutes of that episode to YouTube, with more to come. Here's the link to Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9t-CfbkyjU&amp; Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy25x5raQxM&amp; Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1isWbBJoTo&amp; This episode of Media Circu</pre> John Sobol 2012-05-01T16:11:51 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2389 <pre>Dear all, Yesterday we concluded the Situated Technologies Series with the symposium “Situated Technologies: Beneath and Beyond Big Data” at Cooper Union. http://urbanomnibus.net/2012/04/april-28-situated-technologies-beneath-and-beyond-big-data/ You can download all nine books below. ~Trebor == The Situated Technologies Series, edited by Omar Khan, Trebor Scholz, and Mark Shepard http://www.situatedtechnologies.net/ Urban Computing and its Discontents Adam Greenfield and Mark Shepard Fall 2007 http://www.situatedtechnologies.net/files/ST1-Urban_Computing.pdf Urban Versioning System 1.0 Matthew Fuller and Usman Haque Spring 2008 http://www.situatedtechnologies.net/files/UrbanVersioningSystem.pdf Situated Advocacy Benjamin Bratton and Natalie Jeremijenko Laura Forlano and Dharma Dailey Summer 2008 http://www.situatedtechnologies.net/files/ST3-SituatedAdvocacy.pdf Responsive Architecture / Performing Instruments Philip Beesley and Omar Khan Spring 2009 http://www.situatedtechnologies.net/files/ST4</pre> Trebor Scholz 2012-04-29T14:06:33 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2388 <pre>(Hyperlinked version: http://tinyurl.com/dx5dwsb Images discussed: http://tinyurl.com/7g2h77e) New Literacies for a New Aesthetic? by Trebor Scholz As a ten year-old, passing by the Forbidden City of the East German Head of State and his functionaries sparked my imagination. The walled complex, tucked away in a forested area near Berlin, was guarded by an armed division of the Stasi, named after the founder of the Soviet secret service Felix Dzerzhinsky. Back then, you couldn't Google for images of this residential compound; Pinterest, Google Earth, and civilian drones were not around. And even if they were available, there was no grassroots way of mass-reproducing images or texts. After the implosion of the German Socialist Republic in 1989, however, reports about this forest settlement surfaced. My top pick of all stories is that about one apparatchiks’ secret closet filled with Salvador Dali paintings, financed by public funds. Months later, early in 1990, those who celebrated their newly found freed</pre> Trebor Scholz 2012-04-29T13:58:20 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2387 <pre>On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 10:24 PM, Mark Andrejevic &lt;markbandrejevic-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt;wrote: "What kind of information will be prioritized and made available via the "social graph" if this is clearly governed by and subordinate to commercial imperatives? How might a Facebook social graph differ from one that was not crafted according to commercial imperatives? These are the same questions we once asked about how commercial imperatives structures the news and information made available via commercial media outlets. It surely retains its relevance and urgency in the online context, yet we don't seem to ask it as much)." Mark, these are all excellent questions. A few vaguely coherent thoughts in response... - re general critiques of advertising and marketing to children, of the kind that were common a few decades ago but are now almost extinct...yes how much we have changed! My father was a pioneer in educational television but also wrote TV series based on GI Joe and Strawberry Shortcake</pre> John Sobol 2011-11-10T17:03:22 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2386 <pre>John's post raises some core questions for discussions about the brave new world of ubiquitous commercial monitoring. To answer the question of the potential harms of tracking and target marketing to kids -- and others (setting aside questions about potential "abuse" or data breaches and focusing on the use proper, as it were), would mean considering the impact of marketing, commercialization, and advertising more generally on children (and society) as well as the ways in which these shape the content to which they are exposed and their access to information (if, as Mark Zuckerberg thinks, his social algorithms will eventually take primacy in organizing our information worlds for us, what does it mean that these are developed in accordance with commercial imperatives? What kind of information will be prioritized and made available via the "social graph" if this is clearly governed by and subordinate to commercial imperatives? How might a Facebook social graph differ from one that was not crafted according t</pre> Mark Andrejevic 2011-11-10T03:24:06 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2385 <pre>I think that it's irresponsible to collect data about people without their understanding of what's going on and their ability to intervene in a reasonable way. For one version of why, I recommend reading "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" and consider what her family went through. I also think that a lot of databases are being used to manipulate and segregate people and I think that we need to think through the cultural implications of this. Not at an individual harm level, but at a societal level. What happens when people of color get different experiences than white folks? Think: Filter Bubble issues. Finally, there's the worst case scenario. I think about how the Dutch government's database on its citizens was abused in the 1940s. All of these techs come with good and bad. I don't want to throw away the good to ward off the bad. But I think that we need to have an informed citizenry and I think that people need to understand the implications of a data society. I don't think that we can just</pre> danah boyd 2011-11-10T02:29:43 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2384 <pre>Thanks to danah for the thoughtful response, I think in the end, your study does a good job of demonstrating that the attempt by COPPA to address issues of maturity/safety online is problematic in a variety of ways -- including those associated with the examples you cite in your most recent post. What seems less convincing, based on your own findings, is the broader attempt to contest the notion of age-related restrictions of any kind on information collection. If, as you reasonably argue, legal regulation (or as you put it, "Protectionism from the State"), is ineffective when it doesn't accord with social norms, your own study indicates that the majority of parents (57 percent) say they support restrictions on data collection (tracking?) even if it means shutting down their children's access to social networking sites. That seems like a pretty significant finding. The "rock-solid" education plan you propose would most likely raise this percentage, based on what we've seen in the research on attitudes to t</pre> Mark Andrejevic 2011-11-10T00:15:40 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2383 <pre>John from the session last week with a bunch of London based screenagers (14, 16, 17, 19 and 21 years old) - it is evident that they are far more aware than their parents of harm and benefits, indeed they are the educators of the teachers, younger siblings and parents (and me) They (screenagers) have found various ways round services that they don't want to be tracked on and indeed one question came up about "show me how easy it is to track" which showed that, at scale, it is much harder than you think...... 1. location is off. 2. parents pay for mobiles. 3. mobile is pay as you go. 4. several subscription for mobiles 5. use of persona and pseudonyms 5. closed user groups 6. privacy setting managed 7. use different IM to respond to question 8. migrate across platforms and services over an evening..... 9. private back channels 10. shared machines at home So we have "Consumer Kids" Mayo and Nairn at one end is about the possible but as show in the demo's of tracking - not probable..... </pre> Tony Fish 2011-11-09T15:43:56 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2382 <pre>In terms of surveillance and class politics, I recommend Margaret Nelson's "Parenting Out of Control." Her work is ethnographic but she knows a lot about this space and the class politics involved. There is no doubt that this survey is about parents who are online and whose kids are online. And one thing that we've been learning about those who opt out is that they are primarily religious (not actually simply lower SES). They opt out because they don't want their children exposed to public content at all. As for my personal take on addressing COPPA. The following are 100% my personal opinions and don't reflect the attitudes of my co-authors or any institution with which I am affiliated. But what I would personally like to see in response to the failures of COPPA is the following: 1) Don't extend COPPA. Don't try to make it stronger. Just leave it as-is for now. 2) Don't build on COPPA. Do not allow bills like the "Do Not Track Kids Act" to presume that COPPA is working. Strip all COPPA-related</pre> danah boyd 2011-11-09T01:24:49 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2381 <pre>On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 10:56 PM, Seeta Gangadharan &lt; seeta.gangadharan-LrD5EImo2rg&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org&gt; wrote: Hi all, I would be interested to hear from people about this question too, specifically, what are the actual harmful experiences that have resulted from corporate tracking/targeting of teens/kids, as opposed to the perceived or potential harmful experiences? I can think of the RIAA lawsuits but would be keen to hear about others. Personally, as a parent of 'tweens I sympathize with the perspective that assumes that any and all tracking and targeting of our kids - corporate or otherwise - is inherently dangerous and undesirable. But another part of me wonders whether this is not an unfounded assumption. For example, I am of the belief that the passion for privacy that is inherent to literate culture and that arises out of the anonymity of literate technology has been a key factor in destroying our perception of the interrelatedness of all things, and thus in enabling our disastrous delusion that it</pre> John Sobol 2011-11-08T15:20:52 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2380 <pre>Hi Lynn/all, Thanks for this message. Per your point I am just at the very beginning stages of a qualitative study that examines the issue of online surveillance within the context of digital inclusion policies. (My starting point is the concept of digital inclusion, not the nature of online privacy or surveillance.) The study will take me to four different sites (in the U.S.) where members of chronically underserved communities are going online for the first time or relying on community anchors for access to and knowledge about broadband (fixed or mobile). This is not a family setting but a "gateway" setting, where I'm anticipating many concerns about surveillance will surface (note: we've seen hints even in survey-based and qualitative research coming out of the Federal Communications Commission with Horrigan et al. and Dailey et al.'s works). From initial preparatory interviews that I've done to set up the study, it seems that concerns corporate surveillance are as potent as government </pre> Seeta Gangadharan 2011-11-08T03:56:04 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2379 <pre>Lynn - thanks I enjoyed your insights and contributions As a mobile phone stat - over half of kids in western EU and US under 13 now have a personal mobile and they use it as a place where we don't have control. There are now 5.8bn mobile phone subscriptions (equil to 80% of population) and only 4.7bn people with toothbrushes. Mobile is the first and in many cases the only experience of the web. Agree that nothing replaces the need for parents to parent, but we appear to have lost the balance of rights and responsibilies..... Best, Tony www.mydigitalfootprint.com -----Original Message----- From: idc-bounces-xGejAJT2w6zHsyC+C8RGZV6hYfS7NtTn&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org [mailto:idc-bounces-xGejAJT2w6zHsyC+C8RGZV6hYfS7NtTn&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Lynn Clark Sent: 07 November 2011 13:31 To: idc-xGejAJT2w6zHsyC+C8RGZV6hYfS7NtTn&lt; at &gt;public.gmane.org Subject: Re: [iDC] Why Parents Help Children Violate Facebook's 13+ Rule This has been a very interesting discussion. I've been doing ethnographic work with high school</pre> Tony Fish - AMF Ventures 2011-11-07T14:28:38 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2378 <pre> This has been a very interesting discussion. I've been doing ethnographic work with high schoolers in lower income families and have data that support both the boyd et al. survey and Mark Andrejevic's points. I agree with danah that parents aren't very concerned about tracking (although many of us in the scholarly community believe they should be). Still, I'm not in favor of the lowering or removal of COPPA's age restrictions, or even of having Facebook et al. remove their "no one under 13" policy. Yes, parents feel that their views are more valid than those of the government's, but the "no one under 13" policy does create a moment for intervention, e.g., it becomes a point of discussion between child and parent that's valuable, even if both decide that the child is "mature" enough for violating the policy. Getting on Facebook and "at what age should my child get a cell phone?" seem to be two key questions of the tween years, not just among children and parents but among parents within their own so</pre> Lynn Clark 2011-11-07T13:31:25 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2377 <pre>Thank you all for the insights and the converstation....I have added some personal comments from EU/ London in CAPS below to make them easy to read. I am also running a survey on this topic - please do complete it if you have some time it takes about 10 minutes. The final summary will be free and I will share the raw data with those who request it. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NFHR3BF Tony Fish (Author - My Digital Footprint) -----Original Message----- I totally agree with you that tracking is indeed a core issue here. But it's also clear that it's not something that parents, children, or adults in general understand [ I RAN A WORKSHOP WITH "SCREENAGERS" LAST WEEK ON THIS TOPIC IN LONDON LAST WEEK - THE KIDS ARE SO MUCH MORE AWARE]. COPPA doesn't educate people about tracking. It basically says, if you're 13 or older, you can be tracked no question. If you're under 13, you need your parents' permission to get tracked/to get access. [100% AGREE] I do not believe that age restrictions do anything to </pre> Tony Fish - AMF Ventures 2011-11-07T08:17:48 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2376 <pre>[My apologies for my tardiness in responding; this week has been challenging.] I totally agree with you that tracking is indeed a core issue here. But it's also clear that it's not something that parents, children, or adults in general understand. COPPA doesn't educate people about tracking. It basically says, if you're 13 or older, you can be tracked no question. If you're under 13, you need your parents' permission to get tracked/to get access. I do not believe that age restrictions do anything to address tracking. Adults are clueless about tracking. Chris Hoofnagle's work showed this. And we couldn't even run measures on what parents knew because their basic literacy was so low. They simply don't understand how targeted marketing works let alone how data is shared, sold, or used. From my personal position, I believe that we need to 1) create rock-solid education programs to address the media literacy problem here; 2) focus on devising solutions to minimize how data is is abused that do not foc</pre> danah boyd 2011-11-06T21:48:02 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2375 <pre>I also read this article and can only agree with Mark and support his criticism. The crucial question (Table 13) only talks about government involvement in setting age limits, there is no talk about targeted advertising, company practices, political economy, capitalism, etc - the question formulation is manipulative and is framed by liberal ideology that stirs sentiments against government intervention and ignores (as in the whole study) political economy, advertising culture, and capitalism. No surprise the only conclusion is "but the key to helping children and their parents enjoy the benefits of those solutions is to abandon age–based mechanisms that inadvertently result in limiting children’s options for online access". No questioning of the corporate character of social media, etc etc. There was once a guy called Lazarsfeld making a distinction between administrative and critical communication research... This is just another study about social media in the whole vast universe of adm</pre> Christian Fuchs 2011-11-04T21:32:24 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2374 <pre>Thanks for this heads up about an interesting and provocative study. What I find disturbing about it is the fact that the question of tracking is downplayed in your survey, even though the issue of tracking is a *core*concern of the policy measures the study purportedly addresses. What emerges from your findings is that most parents think that age restrictions have to do with issues of maturity and safety which they can address themselves (without the heavy hand of the state, thanks very much) through awareness/monitoring of their children's activity (and state guidelines). Only two parents in the sample mention privacy -- none, I gather, mention tracking and targeting. I'm willing to bet you would have gotten very different results if you had specifically addressed the questions of behavioral tracking, data-mining, and targeted advertising by, say, asking parents whether age restrictions should be set on the ability of companies to collect, save, and mine detailed data about children's behavior in order t</pre> Mark Andrejevic 2011-11-03T08:00:05 http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.culture.media.idc/2373 <pre>I know that many of you believe that COPPA is intended to curb the practices of companies, but it has serious unintended consequences that affect parenting, education, free speech, and children's rights. For that reason, I want to share a new study that I've been working on has serious policy implications that affect every aspect of internet studies. For those who don't know anything about COPPA, it's the U.S. legislation that prompts most major U.S. companies to make their websites 13+. The regulation is currently being reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission (and they're seeking public comments by Nov 28 so if any of you are interested, please let me know!). Anyhow, I'm really excited about this study and I hope you will be too! Title: "Why Parents Help Their Children Lie to Facebook About Age: Unintended Consequences of the 'Children's Online Privacy Protection Act'" Authors: danah boyd (Microsoft Research/NYU), Eszter Hargittai (Northwestern), Jason Schultz (UC-Berkeley), and John Palfrey (Harva</pre> danah boyd 2011-11-01T14:31:39 Search the mailing list at Gmane query http://search.gmane.org/?group=$group=gmane.culture.media.idc