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Happy New Year!
I have the honour of writing the first ISP @ UEA blog post of 2019 to tell you about a conference I was invited to speak at on Tuesday 8th January at the Julian Study Centre on UEA Campus. It was co-hosted by the Dr Harry T Dyer from the School of Education here at the UEA, and Dr Zoetanya Sujon, from the UAL London College of Communication. Attracting many leading international speakers across a variety of backgrounds from within the social sciences and humanities, the conference was very well attended. The idea of the conference was to approach the question about what it means to be ‘social’, and participate in society, in the digital age. For example, are the increasing divides between groups in the real world also occurring online, or is the increase in online participatory culture a beacon of hope in an age of divisive politics and increasing nationalism and isolationism?
The event was opened by Prof. Nick Couldry from LSE, whose keynote speech entitled Deep Mediatization: Towards a Datafied Social Order asked whether we, as individuals, need to grasp new forms of power or agency, given that society is becoming increasingly focused around media and our interaction with it. Drawing on his forthcoming August 2019 book (with Ulises Mejias) ‘The Costs of Connection: How Data Colonizes Human Life and Appropriates it for Capitalism’ he argued persuasively and engagingly that data is now an extension of capitalism, driven by a new corporate strategy. By engaging so heavily with online forms of media, we are allowing ourselves to be tracked and our data collected. This new form of social knowledge is privately funded, analysed and used, debated, accountable and contested.
After a coffee break, we went straight into the first panel. At this point, I would like to mention that as I have not yet the ability to clone myself, the rest of this report will cover the panels that I attended. Information on the speakers in the other panels is available from the conference programme or from the twitter feed from the day (@SocialDigitalA2 #UnderstandingTheSocial).
With that said, the first panel I attended (not least because I was presenting in it!) was ‘Images – Use and Misuse’, chaired by Ysabel Gerrard. Four panels across a variety of topics were brought together through the theme of commercialisation of imagery and the value of reputation in comparison to financial, economic values. The panel was opened by Chandell Gosse who presented her paper (co-written with Jacquelyn Burkell) ‘Politics and Porn: A Look at How News Media Characterises the Problem with Deepfakes’. Deepfakes are a variant of machine learning that use algorithms to superimpose one person’s face onto another person’s body, and are usually used to discredit a media personality by implying they acted in pornographic films.. Chandell used this concept to explore the concept of a ‘hierarchy of harm’ being used by certain elements of society against other people they wish to shame and silence.
Next up was my own presentation ‘Fannish Social Interactions Online: More Than Produsage?’, where I used a dataset from my PhD research to argue that fans posting to archives such as Fanfiction.Net may be doing so to improve their literacy skills as well as to engage with the underlying work (and the community of fans of the underlying work). This positive social interaction (a form of peer production known as distributed mentoring) should not be overlooked by copyright law in an age of where corporate led interests are being increasingly focused on (for more on this, see the previous work written for this blog on the Proposed Copyright Directive available here and here).
The third paper in this panel, ‘Brands and Productive Publics in the Event Economy: The Case of Milano Design Week’ was given by Alberto Cossu who took us through the role of public as producers in his case study of Milano Design Week. By scrutinising Instagram photos using digital methods and critical visual analysis methods, he assessed how far the public are copying or fighting the branding chosen by the organisers of the Design Week.
Closing out Panel 1 was Karen Cross, who used an investigation of the ‘Throwback Thursday’ hashtag (#tbt) and use of retro vernacular filters in her paper ‘The Time of the Social Image’ to explore a taxonomy of memory. Through an investigation of the use of timelines and embedded images, she enabled us to develop our understanding of the relational dynamics of memory and how they are extended, enlarged and shown online.
After a wonderful lunch break, we went back into the second panel. As a Law researcher, I attended ‘Digital Use, Rights, Governance and Power’ chaired by Harry Dyer, where issues about governance of behaviour online were discussed in a variety of contexts.
The panel was kicked off by Ioanna Noula and Jonny Shipp who presented their paper ‘Digital Governance and Our Common Digital Future: A Digital Sustainability Agenda’. They set out their vision working with The Internet Commission to challenge the ‘unintended, unanticipated or undesired consequences of digitalisation’ using an evidence-based technique. By tackling digital pollution online (such as hate speech and the erosion of trust in political institutions), they wish to guide policy and create more accountability and responsibility online.
Thorsten Bronholt delivered the second paper of the panel ‘Governed by Algorithms: Theories of Digitised Power to Shape Subjects and Societies’. Through an application of Foucault’s theories of governmentality and power to social media sites such as Facebook, this paper investigates how the digital codes that run the sites and enable social engagement with them can be seen as laws (such as argued by Lessig in his concept of Code 2.0) of the cyber polity. As such, the company managers of these websites are shaping society through governance of code, designed internally by coders who work for the interests of the company.
The last paper of this session was Rebekah Larsen’s ‘Networked Discussions About the Network: Public(s) Discussions Around The Right To Be Forgotten’. This discussion on networks, representation and visibility asked how we can productively critically use networks as concept and method in terms of researching the ‘social’ i.e. the way people interact, create intimate relationships and act collectively online. By focusing on the Right to Be Forgotten, she investigated ideas such as personality and how it interacts with personal data online; the divide between your private life and your public reputation online; and how human rights theories and politics apply on this social network, especially in relation to gender.
After another coffee break (and important opportunity to network), the final panels of the day began. As a fan studies scholar, I chose to attend ‘Users, Fans, Followers and Friends’, chaired by Karen Cross. The three papers in this section focused specifically on positive social interactions among named social groups online.The panel was opened by Carolina Bandinelli and Alessandro Gandini’s paper ‘Trust in the Age of Dating Apps’, where they looked at how users interact with each other and with the app in order to come to a position of trust with strangers, and whether this is distinguishable from existing understandings about how trust is formed offline. This mediated form of intimacy can tell us much about how dating and romance has changed in the digital age, as well as broader ideas about social dynamics.
The second paper in this panel was given by Shiyu Zheng, who presented her research ‘How Chinese Fans Use Social Media to Transnationally Engage in the Participatory Culture of Contemporary British TV Drama’. This paper focused on how Chinese social media platforms engage with British media products (specifically BBC’s Sherlock) and how they can be used to improve the spread of transnational cultural products.
The final paper of the day was given by Ema Pei-Ying Wang on the topic of ‘The Influence of PTT Bulletin Board System on Taiwanese Internet Culture, Mainstream Media and Civic Engagement’. This paper closed out the session by looking at how users of PTT (an online forum in Taiwan similar to Reddit) interact and influence each other online. It especially looked at the strong social bonds and shared identity between users and how this creates new forms of culture such as slang and memes that then go viral elsewhere online.
After yet another coffee break to warm us up on a cold January Norfolk day, we were ushered into the JSC lecture theatre for the closing keynote, given by Professor Gina Neff on ‘Toward Network Solidarity’. In this keynote, she argued that, in the new media age, we can no longer assume that standard forms of news reporting has a central role in how society receives information. By referring to the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal, she argued that more of us are getting our information through social media, which is susceptible to manipulation and misinformation. Despite being increasingly more connected with those around us online, many of us are feeling deep distrust with the information coming through our networks, and are therefore feeling disconnected and isolated. This lack of standard forms of solidarity, Prof Neff argued, can be seen in light of new forms of social harmony that may emerge in the future based on empathy and interconnectivity.
All in all, this was a fascinating look at research covering a variety of different topics. While it was not a legal conference, many of the conclusions drawn have influence on Information Society Policy. For more information about the brilliant research contained within this event, there will be a forthcoming special edition of the New Media and Society journal containing selected papers from the event.
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Figure 1: Prof Couldry Keynote: Deep Mediatization - Ruth Flaherty
Figure 2: Chandell Gosse Politics and Porn - Ruth Flaherty
Figure 3: Alberto Cossu Brands and Productive Publics in the Event Economy - Ruth Flaherty
Figure 4: Karen Cross The Time of the Social Image - Ruth Flaherty
Figure 5: Thorsten Bronholt Governed By Algorithms - Ruth Flaherty
Figure 6: Ioanna Noula Digital Governance and Our Common Digital Future - Ruth Flaherty
Figure 7: Rebekah Larsen Networked Discussions About the Network - Ruth Flaherty
Figure 8: Smartphone dating app illustration, attribution: Santeri Viinamäki (Wikimedia Commons) and available here. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Figure 9: BBC's Sherlock, attribution: andiezoe (Flickr) available here. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic License.
Figure 10: PTT Board, attribution: moboo (Wikimedia Commons) and available here. It is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.