analyzing digital culture

self branding

individuals construct and promote a consistent, marketable and authentic self-image in order to gain economic opportunities

(thinking of your self as a product to be marketed)

autheticity

the construction of a consistent and unique personal
brand that is seen as unique and valuable. necessarily a marketable self,
commercialization however leads to a loss of authenticity

attention economy

The concept that the amount of attention and engagement a user can
generate on a social media platform has value and can be monetized. Involves paying,
receiving

post based fame

individual post performance is now more important than persona based. (Viral TikTok)

persona based fame

was a foundation of long-lasting popularity on older social media
platforms like YouTube and Instagram. It relied on creating a well-maintained online
image of a person, which could acquire followers interested in their content and lives

self posturing

is the practice of presenting oneself in a certain way online in order to gain
attention and build a following.

algorithmic visibilty

creators need to be noticed by algorithms

■ Visibility labor necessitates comprehension of algorithms and their changes

reactive dynamism

each social network claiming to be more authentic than its competitors

archival culture

stays on the internet forever (instagram post)

ephemeral content

disappears after a while, more spontaneous, less polished (IG stories, snapchat )

generation like

“Generation Like (2014)” explores the connection between mighty corporations and the teenagers who
are haste to promote what they “like” on social media

* we are defined by what we like
* invisible labor by audiences hoping to get recognized
* visibility means monetary benefits

meme definition (dawkins)

a “cultural replicator” that spread ideas and behaviors in an infectious, gene-like fashion among individuals and population alike.

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meme definition (shifman)

“units of popular culture that are circulated, imitated and transformed by individual internet users, creating a shared cultural experience in the process

meme form

* form (layout and physical components)
* content (ideas and ideologies)
* stance (The positioning of the author in relation to the message)

memetic content

a piece is altered or changed as it is passed along

viral content

a piece of content is passed along intact and unaltered

internet ugly

the aesthetic- freehand mouse drawings, poor grammar and spelling, human made glitches and rough photo manipulation ○ Rather than a genre it's a cultural dialect ○ It was the core aesthetic of memetic internet content and the main source is 4chan

4chan

anonymous website where you can post mainly pictures, anonymity is an affordance

* Every thread is deleted within days or sometimes minutes, these constantly disappearing pages encourage rapid iterations of ideas
* Mostly overshadowed by Reddit

meme life cycle

* birth at a Primary source


* loses the memes to secondary sources >makes new one> loses to secondary sources
* death: The insider feels that the outsider has stolen their subculture and it is no longer funny

we are legion

* explores the historical roots of early hacktivist groups like Cult of the Dead Cow and Electronic
Disturbance Theater and traces how they evolved and coalesced into Anonymous,
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instagrammatics

research method to study visual content using textual hooks( researching images through metadata) researching instagram by looking at everything else but pictures.

* common social media practices like hashtags.

instagramism

'place making'- hotspots or settings made for the purpose of being posted on instagram

image staining

Algorithmic auditing. Google ads have been found to be racist, raising the question of how algorithms work, and whether their training material should be reconsidered

platform vernaculars

platforms' own unique combination of styles, grammars, and
logics.
○ Vernacular is a common way of speaking
○ Ex: Twitter hashtag, Instagram short videos
○ Every platform has its own vernacular

platform affordances

The platforms tools or features that allow for a certain type of content

* Technologies don’t make people do things but instead, push,
pull, enable and constraint.

\#follow me

* instagram cannot be trusted at all
* journalist examines how many fake followers people have
* raises the question if anything online is actually real

web 2.0

The second stage of development of the internet, characterized by the static
web pages to dynamic or user-generated content and the growth of social media

the information universe

Tim Berners-Lee

* Late 1990: World Wide Web was born, navigating through HTTP and URL


* HTML describes how a document should look
* The goal was to create a universal document system and information resource
* created at the european centre for nuclear research to organize information

The virtual community

Rhiengold (hippy journalist)

* vision of the web as a place for freedom of expression with out censorship like mainstream media

gift economy

* people on WELL would do things for one another out of a spirit of building something between them, rather than calculated exchange of goods and services

cyberlibertarianism

* governments should not intervene with what people are doing on the internet
* it should remain a free and uncensored place

Web Exceptionalism

the new technology comes with a promise of doing something different and changing the ways we do things.

* new technology is always better than its competetors

memex

1945 Bush imagined a new machine, “it is a device in which an individual
stores all her books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it
may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate
supplement to his memory”
○ The memex was seen as a potential solution to the problem of information
overload, and Bush argued that such a device could help to improve
communication and collaboration among scientists and other researchers

we live in public

follows josh harris a famous internet millionaire who liked controversial social experiments

* we live in a public: big brother concept of placing 100 humans in a terrarium with cameras following every move they make
* point is we will willingly trade our privacy for the connection and recognition we all deeply desire

online activism

platforms can be used in revolutions to speak out and fight governments

* govs can push back with surveillance and censorship

slacktivism

critique of online activism

* digital activism is the lazy approach without any effect

data extractivism

companies extracting user data for profit

platform imperialism

Big platforms having control over everything and everyones data making them too powerful

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evengy morozov pov

Or we can use the recent data controversies to articulate a truly decentralized, emancipatory politics where institutions will be deployed to recognize, create, and foster the creation of social rights to data.

* big companies should have to pay for our data

discourse

is the use of language relative to social, political, and cultural formations
■ How technologies become part of our systems of goals, values, meaning

Discourse and social media companies

Online content purveyors must play a careful game in positioning themselves to users, clients, advisers and policymakers, making strategic claims as to what they do and do not do

* ex Zuckerberg reconceptualized privacy within a rhetoric of control. Also emphasizing openness and transparency.

The great Hack

* our behaviour is predicted in our media use
* cambridge analytica scandal
* data is the most valuable currency in the world

commons based peer production

changed the way information goods are generated,situated and disseminated via network communication and communication technologies

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peer production

radically decentralized, collaborative and nonproprietary; based on sharing resources among loosely connected individuals who cooperate with each other without relying on either market price or managerial commands

* Free labor, voluntary action, free information, public ownership

real utopia

Peer production has been proposed as a potential way to create areal utopia, where people work together for the common good and share the benefits of their labor.

* Real utopias don't show us perfect world, wikipedia is an example of something thought to be impossible until it happens.

articulation work

division of work, when you have more people do work it’s important to divide it, every day practices are central in creation of social reality especially

* modulation, adaptation, and reutilization of tangible
artifacts in connection with practices of storing and sharing.
● The practices included excerpting, transcribing, copying and photographing digital
artifacts which made Wikipedia a peer production project.

information bubble

living only in a reality curated by yourself, filtered all the things you dont want to hear.

san junipero

San Junipero explores a utopian future where people after death can live in a virtual reality with opportunities to live in whatever age they want. This let the main protagonists explore their queer personalities that they weren't able to explore in the real word.

public relevance of algorithms

producing and certifying knowledge. There are 6 dimensions of public relevance algorithms that have political valence:

* patterns of inclusion: choices behind what is included
* cycles of anticipation: trying to predict users
* evaluation of relevance: trash in trash out
* The Promise of Algorithmic Objectivity: promise of being unbiased
* Entanglement with practice: users trying to figure out algorithms
* The production of calculated publics: things are tailored to users prefrences

Algorithmic Imaginaries

the collective visions and expectations of the impacts that algorithms have on society

platform paternalism

* Restriction by platforms, like parents telling their kids what to do.
* Describes the tension of people that work with algorithms and the rules of the platform.
* Platforms take down strategies, often not meant to be illegal, and use their power to set rules of the platforms: What you can or can't do.

the secret rules of modern living

* algorithms solve issues
* Computers perform tasks, that is why algorithms are perfect for computers.
* Speed is important for the efficacy of the algorithm.

filter bubble

a result of personalized search in which a website algorithm selectively guesses
what information a user would like to see based on their past click behavior.

echo chamber

only seeing a particular groups opinion or part of information made by human communication, not algorithmically

Explicit personalisation

you filter the options (not an algorithm)

implicit personalization

you are not aware of options filtering (algorithms working behind the
scenes)

algorthimic discrimination

* price discrimination( Safari users charged more for airfares)
* racially biased suggested engine ads (Google autosuggest shows prejudice)
* linkden filters may discriminate canidates

culpability

* platforms don't want to take accountability for the things users do on them, they want to be only seen only as neutral conduits, which is not true

disinformation

* the purposeful construction of true or partly true bits of information into a
message that is misleading which is spread deliberately, often with the goal of deceiving
people or influencing public opinion.

misinformation

false or inaccurate information that is spread unintentionally, without the
intent to deceive.

after truth

Post-truth culture: People cannot distinguish true and fake news anymore.

* trump and hillary
* pizza gate

soft moderation

Using incentives for people to post useful content

* Reddit upvote system (slashdot)
■ Editorial, editing of the comment space

hard moderation

using AI or software to filter harmful content and remove it

* Made as a response to business pressures and public policy pressures

algorithmic folk theories

we don't know how algorithms work, so users come up with own theories to figure it out

platforms (Gillespie)

they Host, organize, and circulate users' shared content or social interactions for them

* Platforms do, and must, moderate the content and activity of users, using
some logistics of detection, review, and enforcement
* Platforms don't want to be seen as “media companies” but only as conduits to avoid
responsibility

deplatforming

the suspension of a user from a platform. It is often described as a form
of censorship or restraint on a user's voice.

■ Consequences: losing access to family photos, losing contact with loved
ones

platformization

can be defined as the penetration of economic, governmental, and infrastructural
extensions of digital platforms into the web and app ecosystem, fundamentally affecting the
operations of cultural identities.

* 3 dimensions are governance, markets, infastructures

platform dependence

app developers are faced with a constantly shifting and
intricate set of developer guidelines from App Store.

● Gaming industry is platform dependent( software that needs
hardware)

platform independence

news organizations, they are very protective of
political and economic independence.
NYTimes- managed to get revenue by itself through subscribers
independently, Buzzfeed is completely reliant on advertisers

network effects

the cost of production and consumption of goods that affect thirdparties, can be same-side (direct), cross-side (indirect), and positive or negative

* Ex: Positive, same-side effect: the more users join Facebook it makes the platform more valuable for other end-users, and also increases the value of

platform (poell)

data infrastructures that facilitate, aggregate, monetize, and govern interactions
between end-users and content and service providers

the playlist

Daniel Ek and his creation of spotify

* combating the music industry for free music
* gets hate on by big companies

lean platforms

Uber, Airbnb, etc..

■ Lean because they outsource as many operational aspects as possible,
including labor, as most workers are classified as independent
contractors
■ Hyper-outsourced model

gig economy

is about providing on-demand services via platform/app, labor power is monetized

* independent low paid workers
* no contracts or worker rights
* deliveroo, uber eats
* mutisided markets

platform labor

is uncertain, contextual and precarious, always shifting conditions which workers
must continually adapt to.
They can afford to pay the workers low because the migrants don't have other options of work.

Speculative proposition

* Riders are constantly on the edge trying to figure out if they get paid enough or when their next order comes. The uncertainty of how much you make is connected to the unpredictable waiting time and it's also connected to the algorithm so they don't even know how much money they get.

gamification

constant gambling, platform offers little benefits as “games” if you do x amount of
orders erc.

surveillance capitalism

Surveillance capitalism is an economic system based on data extractivism

* Within this system, those who own the means of behavioral modification( Google, Facebook) have the most power: the more data you gather on people, the more you can modify and manipulate their behavior toward profitable outcomes.

megamachine

computational and AI-driven technologies
○ Sets of technological approaches that depend on industrial infrastructures,
supply chains, and human labor that stretch around the globe but are kept
opaque
○ Consists of the work of many individual human actors

technosolutionism

is the belief that technology can solve all of society's problems-
whether these problems are social, economic, political or environmental in nature.
○ It tends to oversell the positive aspects of technology and downplay the negative
aspects.