## <span class="censor">Data Subjects 2021 <br>// Session 09: Situated subjects II: the alt
</span>
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/gdjAV67.png" width="45%">
Pablo Velasco // Information Studies // pablov.me
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/kIdd69G.jpg" width="65%">
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<small>"i found you" / "ok" / "in twitter" / "oh no"</small>
<!-- Q - have you seen it? is this news? what kind of content is this?-->
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[](https://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles)
<small>Eli Pariser's Filter Bubbles</small>
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*Daily Me* (Negroponte 1995): online newspaper with personalised views
<!--Filter Bubbles (Eli Pariser) and Echo Chambers (Cass Sustein) were never clearly defined, and are mostly based on anectodal evidence (Bruns 2020)-->
* **Filter bubble***: emerges when a group of participants choose to preferentially *communicate* with each other, to the exclusion of outsiders (e.g., by comments on Facebook, @mentions on Twitter, etc.)
* **Echo chamber****: emerges when a group of participants choose to preferentially *connect* with each other, to the exclusion of outsiders (e.g., by friending on Facebook, following on Twitter, etc.)
<small>(Bruns 2019)</small>
**originaly from Eli Pariser*
***originally from Cass Sustein*
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## Bechmann and Nielbo (2018)
<!--questioning filter bubbles, but also the notion of "news")-->
<!--Q - what makes news news?-->
- empirical analysis
- reinterpretation of "news" in Denmark
- broad sample
**Information diversity** (Napoli 1999):
- source diversity (outlets)
- content diversity (content, format, ...)
- exposure diversity (audience)
**Methods**:
1. Link similarity
2. Topic modeling
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# Othering, virality, missinformation, and political manipulation
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### *Othering*:
* Producing **the other as subordinate**, and making the subordinate aware of this (Spivak 1985) -> "creating" other groups
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/3O58xmT.jpg" width="40%">
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* **Knowledge and technology** as property of the powerful (Jensens 2011)
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/vqWCNW6.png" width="70%">
<!--careful with notions of the poweful-->
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* *Habitus*: **social relations become part of an individual identity and body**, e.g. how we look and feel (Bordieu 1977) -> which also generates action
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/vFtMs0b.jpg" width="60%">
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### *Othering* to the service of politics
<!--putting 'the other' to the service of politics AN active use)-->
* "**memetic versatility**" (Tuters and Hagen 2018)
- repurposed format
- fixed meaning can change radically
- a measure of concurrent different audiences
* **Digital Dualism**:
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/tA0LkEb.png" width="100%">
<!--complex meaning in simple signs, but also a "floating signifier"-->
* "**transgressive versatility**" (Tuters and Hagen 2018): blurred "edginess" and (((extremism)))
* "**agonistic plurallism"** : a good sign that democracy is inhabited by pluralism != **antagonism**, "total devaluation" (Mouffé 1998; 2013)
<!--
* Methods
* how are memes used
* (((they))) : word2vec
-->
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## Peer-virality
<!--
- Roosevelt advised by the Committee for National Morale (including mead and bateson, etc) later: Wiener
- morale = "democratic personality"
- Wiener /cybernetics): "the behavior of both machines and humans can be represented through computation"-->
- "new communalists" -> *the whole earth catalog* -> Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link or WELL, " in which individuals **gave voice to their experiences, gathered feedback from their peers, and changed their behavior** accordingly"
<small>The Whole Earth Catalog</small>
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/dTxk7X4.jpg" width="90%">
<!--(facebook survey and "sharing" as the basis of silicon valley enterprises - the more viral the better)--> <!--platforms also an extraction industry-->
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/JbIOVUA.png" width="90%">
<small>Bruns et al 2020</small>
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### too many sources, too many methods
<span class="censor">"we will assume that the link domains from the News Feed will contain **established news media** reproducing a similar conceptual understanding of the news" (Bechmann and Nielbo 2018)</span>
- "**Confirmation bias"** (Oswald and Gorsjean 2004): general tendency towards information that confirms, rather than challenge, already existing views
<span class="censor">"We are in the middle of a **transition from a society of facts to a society of data**. During this interim, **confusion abounds surrounding the exact status of knowledge and numbers in public life**, exacerbating the sense that truth itself is being abandoned" ([Will Davies](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/opinion/campaign-stops/the-age-of-post-truth-politics.html))"</span>
* affective virality
* void of a notion of institutional knowledge
* narratives about the future
<!-- data without facts (for example, the weather forecast) -->
<!--"a constantly evolving narrative about the near future."-->
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/Zgh19N6.jpg" width="40%">
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/LdQrkW7.jpg" width="50%">
<!--painting on stone and the phrasing of everything will be all right-->
* "alt-right": **Appropriation of resistance, language, and storytelling techniques** of the "left"(Turner 2019)
* the **idiot** as someone who took a stand against **consensual reality** (Stengers 2004)
<!-- reality? consensual?-->
<!--
- "Computer-supported interconnection is simply no substitute for face-to-face negotiation, long-term collaboration, and the hard work of living together."
-->
---
# ACTIVITY
## Preparation for next workshop
1. Install TOR or use a VPN
3. Watch "Feels good man" (available at [dr.dk](https://www.dr.dk/drtv/program/pepe-the-frog-_-kongen-af-memes_216188))
* Take notes on how the meme starts to get traction (according to the documentary). What are the "fixed" discoursive or non-discoursive elements?
* What notions of "belonging" are explicit in Pepe's iterations in the documentary's narrative?
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