Participatory Culture& New Media 2013
by mlhradio
Datafying the public sphere?Fragmented audiences, media and democracy
Mirko Tobias Schäfer @mirkoschaefer
Assistant Professor for New Media & Digital Culture,Utrecht University
Principal Investigator, Utrecht Data School
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Various degrees of connectedness, publicnessand privacy
Direct personal sphere
Extended networked sphere
Trans/national public sphere
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013
Low threshold for participation
- often gratis (free as in 'free beer')
- easy to use interfaces
- social graph & social lock-in
- implicit participation explicit participation→
Utrecht Data School is a platform for research with and about data. We investigate datafication, and analyze and visualize data.
UDS connects teaching, hands-on practice and scholarship.
www.dataschool.nl
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Every click you make, every Tweet you send...
Wherever people are talking, clicking, typingabout our brand,
Mission Control is here to listen...(Gatorade)
Utrecht (fragmented Twitter audiences)
Thomas Boeschoten, 2013
Public Service Announcement:
Just because they look likebubbles, does not meanthey are filter bubbles!
NL Refugee debate on Twitter NL, P. Verhaar & T. Boeschoten, 2015
Right-wing →
Media →
← Centre/ left wing Belgium centre / left
Belgium right-wing
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Challenges of a datafied public sphere
1) new 'quality' of captured conversations, views, opinions
2) data (context, ownership, re-use)
3) analysis (models and algorithms)
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Revisiting data practices and their impact
→ how is our understanding of the 'public' changing?
→ how inform technologies our knowledge development?
→ how to defend or further democratic values?
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013What can Public Service Media do?
- stop talking about the “big data revolution”,start explaining data practices!
- inform the electorate about models, algorithmsand their social impact
- stimulate and host society-wide & political debateon datafication & algorithms
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013People in this country have had enough of experts (Former UK Justice Secretary Michael Gove, June 2016)
by Gage Skidmore
We brought fact checkers to a culture war.Time to get serious
(Clay Shirky, 22.7.2016)
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013Where is the European public sphere?
- translating national media (print, radio, TV)for EU-wide distribution & commentary
→ creating pan-European media platforms
→ (public) European social media?
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013
Tweets & viewing figures; Van Es, Boeschoten, Van Geenen, 2015
Participatory Culture& New Media 2013
Overlapping audiences on Twitter; Van Es, Boeschoten, Van Geenen, 2015