#com311

via Reddit 

Memes are an integral part of the Internet culture and Limor Shifman, in various chapters of Memes in Digital Cultures, explores the various characteristics of memes.

What is a meme? Shifman starts the second chapter of the book by saying that the term “meme” was introduced by the biologist Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, in which he applies evolutionary theory to cultural change. Dawkins defined memes as small cultural units of transmission that spread from person to person by copying or imitation and, like genes, they undergo variation, competition, selection, and retention since this cultural (re)production favors the strongest. Only the strongest ideas survive. Memes can be compared also to viruses since they quickly spread by a viral automatic contagion.

Internet memes can be treated as (post)modern folklore, in which shared norms and values are constructed through cultural artifacts such as Photoshopped images or urban legends (15). Shifman defines memes as a group of digital items sharing common characteristics:

 Content – the ideas that are conveyed

 Form – the way in which the ideas are conveyed

 Stance – the attitude. Tone and style of communication

 Created with awareness

 Circulated, imitated, and/or transformed via Internet by many users

An important controversy and debate in scholarship is “who’s the boss” that is the question of agency in the process of meme diffusion. Shifman contends that the undermining of human agency is inherent not to the meme concept itself, but only to one strain of its interpretation.

How memes spread? According to Dawkins, memes that spread successfully incorporate three characteristics: longevity (storage), fecundity (the number of copies made in a time unit) and copy fidelity (accuracy) which are all enhanced by the Internet.  

Shifman, instead, conceives spreadability with three main attributes:

Gradual propagation from individual to society. It starts from a “micro” domain (a person) and propagate to a “macro” domain (society).

 Reproduction via copying and imitation – digital repackaging of material

Diffusion through competition and selection – the meme’s degree of adaptability to the sociocultural environment in which it propagates.

Why so many people are driven to make memes? The answer can be found in:

 The economy-driven logic relates to the notion that contemporary society is based on attention economy. The most valuable resource in the information era is the attention people pay.

 The social logic of participation “networked individualism” – individuality and affiliation. The meme responds to the, especially Western, need to feel unique but also the need of being part of a community.

 The cultural and aesthetic logic of participation – the ways in which practices of re-creating images/videos blur the lines between private and public, professional and amateur, market and non-market driven activities.

It is important to note the difference between two different forms and levels of engagement: viral and mimetic. Viral refers to the singular cultural unit whereas mimetic refers to a collection of texts based on intertextuality.

“Stonks” is an intentional misspelling of the word “stocks” which is often associated with a surreal meme featuring the Meme Man standing in front of the picture representing the stock market. Initially, it has been used as a reaction image online in jokes about making poor financial decisions and, afterwards, re-composed with other elements to create new ideas.

via Know Your Meme

Last year, I created a meme during the first lockdown, based on the meme “Stocks”. Since the industrial revolution, the planet has faced centuries of pollution; however, due to the lockdown halt to spread the coronavirus, most of industries were closed, road traffic incredibly declined, and the result was the reduction, at least for that period, of air pollution. Therefore, during these difficult times the planet is metaphorically taking a breath, which can be considered a goal for the eco system.

via Pinterest

Trebor Scholz in “Platform Cooperativism: Challenging Corporate Sharing Economy” explores the way in which it is possible to challenge the corporate sharing economy, which is not about sharing and was not supposed to be in this way. It is, instead, an on-demand service economy that continuously spreads market relations into our lives. Platform Cooperativism is a weapon to challenge this kind of economy since it is about changing patterns of ownership and governance. The extraction processes inserted in the social interactions are heavily pervasive, which  can create anti-social behaviors and sentiments of competition, anxiety and, also, mental health issues.

The digitalized work is an integral component of the corporate sharing economy, yet workers in digitalized work are losing rights in the process. Legal scholar Frank Pasquale compared traditional employment to marriage, with both parties committed to a long-term mutual project. With digitalized work, this project is reversed, and its workforce seeks a series of hookups. The digitalized work creates illusions of flexibility, autonomy, and choice. In reality, however, the worker does not have any type of security. Moreover, Scholtz argues that illegality is a method of the sharing economy. The “nullification of federal law” can be identified in firms that do not pay taxes in sharing economy, and the lack of dignity, rights, and democratic values for workers. Uber is an example of violation of laws since it pays drivers less that the minimum wage. Scholz advocates for a solidarity economy, and for the creation of a cooperative created by people voluntarily united with specific needs and who are willing to operate together and organize a company to fulfill social and cultural needs, rather than just economic interests.

Platform cooperativism is based on:

Copying the existing technology of platforms but adopting a different model of ownership.

Enhancing values and not only profits – solidarity

Reframing the concepts of innovation and efficiency in order to make everyone benefit from the system and not just a few.

The 10 principles of platform cooperativism are:

 Collective ownership

 Decent pay and income security for workers

 Transparency and data portability

 Appreciation and acknowledgement

 Co-programming

 Protective legal framework

 Portable workers protections and benefits

 Protection against arbitrary behavior

 Rejection of workplace surveillance

 The right to log-off

via Eva website

via The Next Web

Nick Srnicek in the second chapter of Platform Capitalism explores the characteristics of the platforms of the digital world through the lens of capitalism and its economic dynamics. 

Capitalism, as an economic system, reinvents itself when a crisis hits. For example, at the end 1990s the end of the ban on commercial activities on the Internet was accompanied by a great enthusiasm. Everyone was investing in this market until it crashed because it was a giant market to sustain. Therefore, a few powerful players remained which adopted the data-centered business model like Google. The changes and technological development translate themselves in informational, or cognitive, or knowledge, or immaterial economy. The powerful players of the digital media world gain ownership over information rather than ownership over the means of production. Indeed, there is a shift toward a more immaterial production: cultural content, knowledge, and services. The richness of Internet-based companies relies on users’ data extraction. Data are the new oil; however, they are not completely immaterial. Data are stored into physical data centers and the global internet traffic requires an immense amount of energy to be sustained. Therefore, the product of work is immaterial, yet the infrastructure is material.

The business model for an effective data extraction revolves around the platform. But, what is a platform?

Srnicek explains that platforms are digital infrastructures that enable two or more groups to interact. They therefore position themselves as intermediaries that bring together different users (30). They provide the environment that enables the users to interact. Nevertheless, they do not constitute the environment solely since they are taking over the entirety of life becoming entities. Another characteristic of platforms is that they rely on the “network effect”: the more users are on the platform, the more the platform gains value. Platforms fight for attention economy and find ways to keep users on the platform as much time as possible.

Platforms are a new type of monopoly, employing cross-subsidisation for which one side of the platform reduces the cost of a service, while the other side raises the cost in order to make up for the losses. Platforms have control and governs all interactions possible in the game and they embody politics. The ownership of platforms is of both software and hardware, and who owns the entire unity holds code, data centers, and servers.

There are 5 types of platforms:

• Advertising Platform – the business model is based on extracting data from users, analyzing it, and transforming it in personalized data for targeted advertisements. Google and Facebook adopt this business model. For example, yesterday I searched on Google for the website of a shoes brand. Immediately after I closed the site, on my Facebook page (and on other social media), appeared several advertisements of shoes from that brand.

• Cloud Platform – the business model based on owning software and hardware and renting them out. Amazon is the largest cloud platform provided.

• Industrial Platform – it builds the hardware and software to transform traditional manufacturing into internet-connected processes and transforms goods into services.

• Product Platform – it transforms a traditional good into a service by collecting subscription fees. The example of this business model is Spotify for music industry.

via Dreamstime

Dan M. Kotliar in “Data Orientalism: on the algorithmic construction of the non-Western other”, explores the concept of data colonialism and the algorithmic gaze along with the ways in which algorithms are programmed to see, depict, and understand the Other.

Scholars Couldry and Mejas compare the appropriation of territory, resources, and people for profit that characterized historic colonialism to data relations and the exploitation of human beings through the extraction of their data that defines data colonialism. According to Couldry and Mejas, what makes the collection of data colonial is its tendency for expansion, both geographic and social. “Data colonialism simultaneously seeks new territories to set its algorithmic eyes on, as well as new aspects of sociality that have previously been missing from its purview” (4). Personal data, in this sense, represent the new oil and currency in the digital media world. Data are continuously extracted offering opportunities for behavioral influence on users. Historic colonialism and data colonialism are based on the same principle of “cheap nature”. Historic colonizers used this principle to justify their actions since, in the place they appropriated, there was an abundance of natural resources and raw materials, whose appropriation was considered unproblematic from the colonizers’ point of view. The same principle is applied to personal data, that are abundantly produced by users and can be used. Moreover, the concept of social rationality gives a justification to this process of data extraction treating the users labor, which makes the data collection possible, as “just sharing”.  

Kotliar emphasizes the idea that colonialism was not only about military force or processes of modernization, but it was also about knowledge creation - the way in which colonizers categorized indigenous into racial, ethnic, and cultural categories which sustained and justified colonial power. This cultural differentiation is what Edward Said described as Orientalism – the process about the creation and the distinction between Oriental and Westerns. “Said predominantly saw Orientalism as a discourse … that systematically devalues the Oriental Others, depicting them as backward, primitive, or weak” (6).

Kotliar bases his article on an empirical study on Extractive, an Israeli start-up company that provides user profiling algorithms to the East Asian market. It gains access to users’ Facebook account and makes the users transfer their credentials and their data into the companies’ hands. These profiles can be later used to create a market segmentation and approach costumers with personalized offers, contest, or services. Therefore, the Extractive algorithms transform anonymous users into accessible costumers. Moreover, Extractive works with Deep Pocket Inspection (DPI) which allows companies to gain access to users’ smartphones and their location, text messages, apps and many other features. Extractive argues that their work does not have cultural or linguistic barriers and have, thus, a universalizing perspective. Instead of categorizing people based on their racial, cultural, and ethnic identity Extractive divides them basing on personal preferences. They have a set of just 30 categories thar can describe people in the entire world. The categories it offers to its clients include names like “techie”, hipster”, “globetrotter”, “artsy” or “sporty”. Therefore, while they claim their algorithms can disregard language and universally categorize people, the categories they created are from a very culture-specific perspective – a Western point of view. Data colonialism, indeed, is deeply connected with capitalism and maximization of profit.

The implications of data colonized subject can be:

 -    Tethered of data judgment: algorithmic discrimination. For example, the face recognition technology perpetuates the racial bias. The algorithm decides, like in the HP case, whether a human face is recognizable or not.

-       Dispossession through data: colonial appropriation. For example, Facebook can decide for a person of color to show the job positions that are more adequate based on who he/she. And, generally, are the job positions that are less prestigious compared to the white counterpart.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

In our days in the dominant digital media world, we often hear the word algorithm as a mysterious quasi-magical mechanism that, in a way, governs the cyberspace. But what is an algorithm?

Researcher Tarleton Gillespie, in the second chapter of Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary of Information Society and Culture, provides an explanation of what algorithms are and their functions in the digital world. First of all, it is important to make a distinction between data and algorithms. Data can be defined as factual information and used as a basis for calculation and reasoning. Algorithm, instead, is a step-by-step procedure for organizing and acting on a body of data to achieve a desired outcome (19). It is, therefore, a procedure for solving a math problem to collect information and involves a series of steps to accomplish a specific goal which usually means maximize profit. From an algorithm designer’s point of view, an algorithm is a model – the formalization of a problem and its goal, which implies also that there are many algorithms inside a given model.

For example, the YouTube algorithm’s goals are to find the right video for each viewer and get the viewers keep watching. Indeed, YouTube provides users several recommended videos based on past researches, interests, location and, in general, collected data from users’ usage of the platform. The YouTube algorithm decides what people watch on the platform 70% of the time, and 81% of American users say that they regularly watch videos recommended by the algorithm.

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

Algorithms can be trained on a basis of existing material and data, certified either by designers or by past users’ practices. The algorithm is then run on these data so that it may learn to pair queries. An example of this use of algorithm is the face recognition technology, but it can contain bias. The tech company HP has been protagonist of a problematic issue regarding the face-tracking technology that does not recognize black faces. If the algorithm is trained to recognize just white faces, it is not going to recognize a black face as a human face, and this becomes really problematic.

Over the weekend I watched a documentary that not only made my skin crawl but honestly discouraged me from trying to gain reach on social media all together. It is an hour and a half long video called “The Cleaners” and I do not recommend it to anyone who wants to still have faith in social networks by the end of it. 

We have all become accustomed to chats and theories about different “algorithms” for different sites and apps. However, the truth goes much deeper than that. Everyone jokes about there being some secret FBI agent that watches them through the phone and laptop cameras, yet no one chats much about the truth of who really decides what happens to your posts and whether they do or do not succeed. 

In this documentary, it is shown that, at least during filming, the people sorting through political rhetoric and pictures of your puppy are citizens from third world countries like the Philippines where they are ruled by their dictator of a “president” and are heavily influenced by Catholic culture. This poses an extreme problem for most minority groups as, when content gets reported, half brainwashed, hyper-Christian, overworked and underpaid individuals are the ones deciding whether or not your posts and even your account stays active and visible. These biased individuals, in essence, control the social media network as we know it. For example, there was a wonderful artist featured in the documentary that painted a parody piece of the national embarrassment that is Donald Trump with a, probably factual, small penis. Not only was the post taken down, but so was the artist’s account. Now the question rises as to why the female moderator was so hot and bothered by this, enough so to use the “community guidelines” as an excuse when literal hate speech and nudity by other parties have gotten an unholy amount of passes. As someone who is cultured enough to know that nude painting is even a general part of the curriculum for art students let alone actual artists and works seen in basilicas and museums, this type of biased hypocrisy is disgusting and very much uncalled for. In the documentary, this same moderator is even shown in a sex shop looking at dildos. 

Now this is something everyone tends to laugh off. That is, until it happens to them. This metaphorical grim reaper is holding every person desiring a following on social media hostage. The question is, what can anyone do when the ones who are supposed to keep the social networks clean are the exact ones making sure it becomes dirtier by the millisecond? It is honestly painful just thinking about the effort so many people and original creators put in, only to be shut down and rejected by some random Filipino in a cubicle half a world away. 

All of this being said, this eye-opening revelation of a documentary was brought up in an educational setting for a reason. The fact that it basically opens and closes with Mark Zuckerberg in court is there for a reason. We all seem to believe that social media evolves as we do. However, it is becoming more and more obvious that as we “evolve” (a whole other question in and of itself), the internet continues to devolve back to base “virtues”, ideologies, and practices of the twentieth century before the internet had even been invented. For something to go viral, it must be entertaining but clean enough for a child and the creator must be respectable and, at most times, white, straight, and cis-gendered. That is, of course, unless it is a fifteen year old twerking for the viewer. But, as I earlier stated, the 1900s and prior have always been a very hypocritical era among the white straight male gaze that the internet has basically become another avenue for. 

As someone who is not white, straight, cis-gendered, or male, I have a pretty clear idea of where exactly I stand in the biased eyes of the social media gods and it is not the best position. For anyone in this predicament, there are really only two things you can do: suck up to the ones deciding your fate OR continue as you are without complaining when your audience is limited to maybe half of your current followers. One cannot start a revolution when rebelling accounts can simply disappear with the click of a mouse in some random country. This then brings into question how attacks like what happened on January 6, 2021 and worse are possible but, of course, if a parodical painting of the burnt orange can’t exist, we can obviously see which side the moderating “Cleaners” are on. 

They aren’t on our side. It is best to come to peace with that sooner rather than later. Any real “takeaway” from the documentary can be summarized in those two previous sentences. Whatever we decide to attempt to do, we must keep in mind that the ones watching us are not unbiased or omniscient. The “Cleaners” are far from being Snow Whites. 

The internet is already known and pre-established as an ever changing, transforming, and evolving thing. What was likely unexpected was the way it originally transformed. 

This post will likely be similar to the past couple ones as we will basically be readdressing the older points of how the internet allowing in the general public sphere caused a revolution in the worldwide web that allowed for the capitalistic ideas that currently control and fuel the modern day internet. 

After completing the course reading, involving two different essays about the evolution of the digital world, it is clear that the idea of granting the public access to the internet was not thoroughly thought out. 

There seems to be a tug-of-war between the mass majority of public users and the original Silicon Valley virtual superpowers. The way that users originally used the internet to share scholarly information then transitioned to using it as a space and “free market” for general opinions (whether factual or not) shows the dawn of a virtual revolution. 

While the Silicon Valley “big brothers” would much rather keep the internet limited and contained to what is profitable and what contributes “positively” to the capitalist ideology the top 1% has, the public masses are leaning towards a desire for an open space to roam and explore the digital world without the need to pay or be at any specific level of class or education. 

The solution showed itself in the form of a compromise: the dawn of social media and online commerce. 

via Saatchi Art

Media scholar Henry Jenkins in the introduction and fourth chapter of “Convergence culture: where old and new media collide”, explores the concepts of convergence and participatory culture. But what convergence means? Convergence can be defined as:

A technological process – different technological fields that convert together.

 A media industries phenomenon – when a company merges with another media industry.

 A set of policies to regulate the media industries phenomenon – laws which limit the converging process

A social practice – the rise of user-generated content.

Jenkins emphasizes the idea that convergence is not only a technological process, but it is about a cultural shift. This is what he calls the “Black Box Fallacy” for which, he argues, media change cannot be reduced to a technological development solely. It is the illusion that technology provokes changes, but it just accelerates the process. The cultural logic of convergence is a process that invests everything including relationships, desires, memories. Therefore, it is not just a black box where different tools converge together, but there is more.

Participatory culture: in participatory culture people are empowered by technology. It is when users become users and producers, who change, manipulate, and create the content. It is important, nonetheless, to make the distinction between participation and interactivity.

Interactivity refers to the ways in which technology has been designed to give an answer to the user. For example, in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, the technology makes the users able to interact with it for the way it was designed.

via RedCapes

Participation is a social cultural phenomenon enhanced by technology for which users are able to change media content. It alters the logic by which media industries operate and by which people consume media products.

Participatory culture, however, was not born with the Internet – it just helped make it more evident. Folk culture is a pre-Internet participatory culture and the domain of gift economy. With the Internet, and billions of people involved, this gift economy clashes. Jenkins gives the example of the fandom world behind Star Wars and the grassroots production. The creativity of the fans’ universe is evident and people make something out of products, like in fan fictions.

One example of successful books originated by fan fiction is The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare. She wrote the Draco Trilogy, which went really viral in the fan fiction world, and was a sexy re-adaptation of Harry Potter’s character Draco Malfoy. This character inspired one of the main character of the series Jace. The fan fiction was then removed from the Internet and the author faced many controversies; nevertheless, the 6 books series, the film, and the TV series originated from a fan fiction.