In the last decade, digital filter bubbles have become widely discussed phenomena in different fields within the broader discipline of media and communication studies. This paper focuses on the ...question of why they are problematic for the functioning of the public sphere. This paper argues that algorithmic personalisation can lead to the fragmentation, polarisation, and radicalisation of the public sphere because of the complex relationship between human agency and technology that mutually encourage one another through habitual adaptation. Through the concept of habit, such theoretical grounding enables a critique of existing empirical research regarding the filter bubble effect, with the argument that the main problem is not information isolation or the reduced accessibility/visibility of selected content, but the habitual adaptation of content to individual users, which can explain why users stick to certain content. The article concludes with the finding that the problem of algorithmic personalisation should be studied as a broader historic phenomenon indicative of the decline of the public sphere, which is itself caused by the conflict between public and commercial interests.
This article discusses the topic of algorithmic personalization and the creation of the so-called “filter bubble” effect, which is often understood as one of the most problematic influences of ...artificial intelligence on democratic social order. The author suggests that focusing on the issue of information diversity, which had far-reaching effect on the empirical research that tried to quantitatively measure and systematically prove the existence of the filter bubbles, was the wrong starting point for the discussion on the application of algorithmic personalization. It has drawn our attention away from the deeper issue: habit. Habitual adaptation of algorithmic personalization, namely, stands in essential contradiction to the ideal image of a non-adaptive public sphere, upon which democratic societies should be based. Focusing on habitual adaptation could also explain why users addictively stick to certain kinds of information, even if they are not caught in an isolated chamber.
New technologies of algorithmisation, data mining, and artificial intelligence appear to elicit contentious impacts on the public sphere. Evaluations of these effects frequently diverge. A noticeable ...schism exists between critical/normative perspective, which highlights the problematic aspects of data exploitation, surveillance, and imperialism, and market-oriented empirical approaches. Drawing on a conceptual-historical argumentation that links current developments to a longer tradition of social communication research rooted in Enlightenment philosophy, the article highlights the contrast between the normative conceptualisations of publicness and public use of reason on the one hand, and empirical approaches aimed at measuring and managing the public(s) and public opinion on the other. The article first identifies the role of the opposition between Humean empiricism, which is based on the principle of conformity to past habits, and Kantian pure law of publicity, which is systematically opposed to such empiricism on many different layers. This opposition is also rooted in the Enlightenment foundational divide between religious and civil communities. It seems that today, with the predominance of data-driven approaches in adapting opinion to past expectations and beliefs, we are paradoxically again returning to the principles similar to those of functioning of pre-modern (religion- and tradition-based) communities.
The reality that has been presented in rap music and its celebrity culture has always been connected with two extremes: the reality of the “thug” life of the streets on the one hand and with a ...specific sort of “American Dream” reality that presents climbing from bottom to top on the other hand. This article explores the reasons why trap music, which originated as a type of rap music in the south of the USA, is now with its specific mixture of hedonism and nihilism, darkness and joy, becoming the music of our times. It argues that this is not a coincidence: the two-fold reality, the cruel reality of living “in a trap” on the one hand and the idealized, dreamy reality full of gold and diamonds on the other hand, is the main allegory of “real” life in late capitalism. How to get out of the trap? In the article, I investigate some crucial problems of contemporary theory regarding class and racial differences and argue that we can extract far-reaching social, political, and theoretical statements through interpretation of music that is often presented as apolitical, vacant, and of poor quality. Interpretation of contemporary development in pop culture will be combined with readings of theorists such as Foucault, Mbembe, Balibar, Marx, Moretti, and Deleuze and Guattari. I argue that identification with trap music, even if it seems conformist and non-critical, is producing paradoxical minoritarian universalism, that could, if we understand the universalization of a dream of individual success as an implicit request for egalitarian society, present certain emancipatory potential.
According to Deleuze, Nietzsche rejected such a dogmatic image of thought and established thought as a singular expression of a concrete living individuum, who resists the enforced universalism of ...thought (morality, common sense, universal truth). Introduction: the rejection of teaching in philosophy Through all the diverse and heterogeneous traditions of the history of philosophy, we can find a repetitive problem regarding the role of education in philosophy.1 The main question in this context is the question of reproduction, progression, and transfer of philosophical knowledge, which is, at the same time, also a paradoxical auto-referential question that in the act wherein it is being posed, that is, in a philosophical text, questions also that very same act, which is necessarily the act of reproduction, progression, and transfer of knowledge. What is his type, his will to power?" (Deleuze 1983, 94-95) That is why we, as a central question of this paper, propose the more precise question of philosophical education, the question which exposes the concrete philosophical practice: the practice of reproduction, progression, and transfer of philosophical knowledge. ...he does not use the (moral) separation between the good and the bad mediation of thought (in the Althusserian terms between ideological and scientific discourse).
Avtorja v članku na podlagi kvantitativnih in kvalitativnih metod analizirata pojavnost slovenske in tuje glasbe v slovenskih radijskih in televizijskih medijih. Pri tem posebno pozornost namenjata ...vlogi vratarstva slovenskih medijev pri formiranju popularne glasbe in glasbenih okusov v Sloveniji. Analiza pokaže, da medijsko odbiranje glasbe upošteva specifične kulturne, družbene in politične kriterije, kar se med drugim kaže v nevključevanju »odbojnih« žanrov, v polarizaciji na ravni glasbenega okusa, v regulaciji migracij glasbe ter v konstruiranju specifičnih konceptualnih mej, ki jih vratarji glasbe vzpostavljajo (in obenem tudi upoštevajo).
Članek slovensko narodnozabavno glasbo postavi v kontekst folk-pop žanrov zahodnega Balkana. Gorenjsko-alpski in izključno slovenski značaj te glasbe je vtem kontekstu pojmovan kot na Balkanu ...vseprisoten simptom distanciranja od Balkana, kar kliče po teoretski refleksiji, ki bi opustila prakso izpostavljanja razlike do (balkanske) drugosti, zaradi cesarje slovenska narodnozabavna glasba sopostavljena turbofolku. V analizi se izkaže, daje obema žanroma skupna sorodna pozicioniranost znotraj kulturnih in razrednih protislovij, ki prečijo tranzicijo v postsocialističnih državah, nastalih na področju nekdanje Jugoslavije. Oba žanra zaznamuje tudi prezentacija modernizacije, vendar paje dovršena tranzicija iz vaškega v urbano okolje, tranzicija iz regionalnega v globalno, povsem prisotna samo v turbofolku, medtem ko se v slovenski narodnozabavni glasbi pojavi določena zapora, zaradi katere se v njej imaginarij mestne urbanosti nikoli ne vzpostavi. Ta razlika se manifestira tudi na ravni zvoka, saj turbofolk funkcionira kot žanrski hibrid, ki tradicionalne glasbene kode povezuje z globalnimi trendi popularne glasbe, medtem ko narodnozabavna glasba tudi vtem kontekstu ostaja bolj konservativna, tradicionalna in uniformirana. Pojavnost te razlike je v članku eksplicirana skozi razredno analizo, ki pokaže, da imaginarij turbofolka ustreza izginjanju srednjega razreda, medtem ko se imaginarij slovenske narodnozabavne glasbe izkaže kot imaginarij ruralnega srednjega razreda.
In the article, I try to present a history of Rog through the perspective of contemporary theories that combine the natural sciences (physics, biology, and chemistry) with the method of ...historiography. In this way, a specific organic history is formed. Organic metaphors that are often used to describe autonomous, self-developed and self-organized spaces are not merely metaphors. I try to observe the history of Rog through a distinct inner dynamic characterized by frequent transitions and instability. This "live" dynamic is something that city authorities should respect and encourage, even if such spaces: 1. do not produce direct surplus value; 2. do not raise the reputation of the neighborhood; 3. do not obey (as other institutional spaces do).
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