In a media ecosystem besieged with misinformation and polarizing rhetoric, what the news media chooses not to cover can be as significant as what they do cover. In this article, we examine the ...historical production of silence in journalism to better understand the role amplification plays in the editorial and content moderation practices of current news media and social media platforms. Through the lens of strategic silence (i.e., the use of editorial discretion for the public good), we examine two U.S.-based case studies where media coverage produces public harms if not handled strategically: White violence and suicide. We analyze the history of journalistic choices to illustrate how professional and ethical codes for best practices played a key role in producing a more responsible field of journalism. As news media turned to online distribution, much has changed for better and worse. Platform companies now curate news media alongside user generated content; these corporations are largely responsible for content moderation on an enormous scale. The transformation of gatekeepers has led an evolution in disinformation and misinformation, where the creation and distribution of false and hateful content, as well as the mistrust of social institutions, have become significant public issues. Yet it is not just the lack of editorial standards and ethical codes within and across platforms that pose a challenge for stabilizing media ecosystems; the manipulation of search engines and recommendation algorithms also compromises the ability for lay publics to ascertain the veracity of claims to truth. Drawing on the history of strategic silence, we argue for a new editorial approach—“strategic amplification”—which requires both news media organizations and platform companies to develop and employ best practices for ensuring responsibility and accountability when producing news content and the algorithmic systems that help spread it.
Algorithms and data-driven technologies are increasingly being embraced by a variety of different sectors and institutions. This paper examines how algorithms and data-driven technologies, enacted by ...an organization like Facebook, can induce similarity across an industry. Using theories from organizational sociology and neoinstitutionalism, this paper traces the bureaucratic roots of Big Data and algorithms to examine the institutional dependencies that emerge and are mediated through data-driven and algorithmic logics. This type of analysis sheds light on how organizational contexts are embedded into algorithms, which can then become embedded within other organizational and individual practices. By investigating technical practices as organizational and bureaucratic, discussions about accountability and decision-making can be reframed.
Social network sites (SNSs) are increasingly attracting the attention of academic and industry researchers intrigued by their affordances and reach. This special theme section of the Journal of ...Computer‐Mediated Communication brings together scholarship on these emergent phenomena. In this introductory article, we describe features of SNSs and propose a comprehensive definition. We then present one perspective on the history of such sites, discussing key changes and developments. After briefly summarizing existing scholarship concerning SNSs, we discuss the articles in this special section and conclude with considerations for future research.
Social media technologies collapse multiple audiences into single contexts, making it difficult for people to use the same techniques online that they do to handle multiplicity in face-to-face ...conversation. This article investigates how content producers navigate ‘imagined audiences’ on Twitter. We talked with participants who have different types of followings to understand their techniques, including targeting different audiences, concealing subjects, and maintaining authenticity. Some techniques of audience management resemble the practices of ‘micro-celebrity’ and personal branding, both strategic self-commodification. Our model of the networked audience assumes a many-to-many communication through which individuals conceptualize an imagined audience evoked through their tweets.
With over 500 million users, the decisions that Facebook makes about its privacy settings have the potential to influence many people. While its changes in this domain have often prompted privacy ...advocates and news media to critique the company, Facebook has continued to attract more users to its service. This raises a question about whether or not Facebook's changes in privacy approaches matter and, if so, to whom. This paper examines the attitudes and practices of a cohort of 18- and 19-year-olds surveyed in 2009 and again in 2010 about Facebook's privacy settings. Our results challenge widespread assumptions that youth do not care about and are not engaged with navigating privacy. We find that, while not universal, modifications to privacy settings have increased during a year in which Facebook's approach to privacy was hotly contested. We also find that both frequency and type of Facebook use as well as Internet skill are correlated with making modifications to privacy settings. In contrast, we observe few gender differences in how young adults approach their Facebook privacy settings, which is notable given that gender differences exist in so many other domains online. We discuss the possible reasons for our findings and their implications.
The phenomenon of “social media” has more to do with its cultural positioning than its technological affordances. Rooted in the broader “Web 2.0” landscape, social media helped engineers, ...entrepreneurs, and everyday people reimagine the role that technology could play in information dissemination, community development, and communication. While the technologies invoked by the phrase social media have a long history, what unfolded in the 2000s reconfigured socio-technical practices in significant ways. Reflecting on the brief history of social media, this essay argues for the need to better understand this phenomenon.
Abstract Purpose To inform the scientific debate about bullying, including cyberbullying, measurement. Methods Two split-form surveys were conducted online among 6–17-year-olds (n = 1,200 each) to ...inform recommendations for cyberbullying measurement. Results Measures that use the word “bully” result in prevalence rates similar to each other, irrespective of whether a definition is included, whereas measures not using the word “bully” are similar to each other, irrespective of whether a definition is included. A behavioral list of bullying experiences without either a definition or the word “bully” results in higher prevalence rates and likely measures experiences that are beyond the definition of “bullying.” Follow-up questions querying differential power, repetition, and bullying over time were used to examine misclassification. The measure using a definition but not the word “bully” appeared to have the highest rate of false positives and, therefore, the highest rate of misclassification. Across two studies, an average of 25% reported being bullied at least monthly in person compared with an average of 10% bullied online, 7% via telephone (cell or landline), and 8% via text messaging. Conclusions Measures of bullying among English-speaking individuals in the United States should include the word “bully” when possible. The definition may be a useful tool for researchers, but results suggest that it does not necessarily yield a more rigorous measure of bullying victimization. Directly measuring aspects of bullying (i.e., differential power, repetition, over time) reduces misclassification. To prevent double counting across domains, we suggest the following distinctions: mode (e.g., online, in-person), type (e.g., verbal, relational), and environment (e.g., school, home). We conceptualize cyberbullying as bullying communicated through the online mode.
About the Authors: Matthew Zook * E-mail: zook@uky.edu Affiliation: Department of Geography, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, United States of America Solon Barocas Affiliation: Microsoft ...Research, New York, New York, United States of America danah boyd Affiliations Microsoft Research, New York, New York, United States of America, Data & Society, New York, New York, United States of America Kate Crawford Affiliations Microsoft Research, New York, New York, United States of America, Information Law Institute, New York University, New York, New York, United States of America Emily Keller Affiliation: Data & Society, New York, New York, United States of America ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9189-0421 Seeta Peña Gangadharan Affiliation: Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1955-3874 Alyssa Goodman Affiliation: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America Rachelle Hollander Affiliation: Center for Engineering Ethics and Society, National Academy of Engineering, Washington, DC, United States of America Barbara A. Koenig Affiliation: Institute for Health Aging, University of California-San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America Jacob Metcalf Affiliation: Ethical Resolve, Santa Cruz, California, United States of America ORCID http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2803-6625 Arvind Narayanan Affiliation: Department of Computer Science, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, United States of America Alondra Nelson Affiliation: Department of Sociology, Columbia University, New York, New York, United States of America Frank Pasquale Affiliation: Carey School of Law, University of Maryland, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of AmericaCitation: Zook M, Barocas S, boyd d, Crawford K, Keller E, Gangadharan SP, et al. PLoS Comput...
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While few studies examine the online privacy practices or attitudes of young people of low socio-economic status (SES), they are often at the most risk of and most susceptible to privacy violations. ...This participatory, collaborative study of 28 low-SES young adults in the New York City area investigates how they view online information sharing. Like most Americans, our participants viewed online privacy as an individual responsibility. We make two primary contributions. First, participants revealed extensive awareness of the risks of sharing information online, and many avoided social media, self-censored, or obfuscated their contributions as a result. Second, many participants had extensive experience with policing and physical surveillance and were aware they could not avoid such encounters through their own efforts. This window into structural discrimination provides an alternate frame to that of “individual responsibility” that educators and researchers can use to conceptualize how privacy is violated online. Framing online privacy violations as inevitable and widespread may not only help foster activist anger and strategic resistance but also avoid the victim-blaming narratives of some media literacy efforts. By examining the experiences of these young people, who are often left out of mainstream discussions about privacy, we hope to show how approaches to managing the interplay of on- and offline information flows are related to marginalized social and economic positions.
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