cct109 final Flashcards

1
Q

Political Economy
definition

A
  • an examination of society
  • regards the law, economy, political environment
  • interrelated and helps establish and sustain social order
  • new media studies focus on an examination of the regulation and ownership of media
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2
Q

Immaterial Labour
definition

A

Participatory culture is vulnerable to the accusation that the immaterial labour of participants is being co-opted by owners of websites without any meaningful control over how it is being used

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3
Q

Surveillance & Privacy
definition

A
  • the coordinated and organized observation of someone to control their behaviour
  • surveillance is commercial, state, personal, and criminal aspects
  • new media generally influence all
  • e.g.. analyzing purchasing power trends from trends according to status updates on twitter
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4
Q

Governance
definition

A
  • a blend of policy, regulation, law, commercial, consumer practice, & organizational behaviour
  • during considerable uncertainty about who has control over the internet, there is a lot of concern over “internet governance”
  • especially as a partial antidote to the free rein of “cyber-liberation” notions
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5
Q

Regulatory Capture

A
  • Regulatory capture happens when a political entity is undercut by the same forces it is trying to regulate
  • Government policies are then developed to serve a special interest over that of the public
  • This is especially troubling when it comes to technology policy
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6
Q

Platforms Economy
definition

A
  • the extent where the modern economy has become dependent on what it is built on
  • online platforms: google (search), Microsoft (software), amazon (sales)

Some of the companies that were the most successful in the 2000s (e.g., Amazon, eBay, and Google) were able to leverage scale.

● Digitization of content transformed the distributional models of the media and entertainment industries

● When a wider range of content is made more accessible through tightly contained online distribution and retail

● With traditional constraints of geography and scale being eliminated, it is niche content that accounts for a rapidly growing proportion of total online sales

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7
Q

Knowledge-Economy
definition

A
  • an economy characterized by a high level of dependence
  • internally and in the form of trade, on knowledge creation, distribution, and exports
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8
Q

Networked Publics
definition

A

publics that are restructured by networked technologies

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9
Q

Affordance
definition

A
  • Affordance comes from networked publics
  • what is new and what is not?
    -we must recognize how tech introduces new social possibilities and how these challenge assumptions people have about everyday interaction
  • the design and architecture of environments enable certain types of interaction to occur
  • the characteristics of an environment are affordances because they make it possible & in some cases, encourage certain types of practices
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10
Q

eCommerce
definition

A
  • online transactions: consumer purchases (buying online) and business-to-business (B2B ordering new stock from a supplier)
  • the growing number of industries
  • fully electronic model is the norm even for goods that are consumed (apple music)
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11
Q

Gig Economy
definition

A
  • an economy that has a lot of people working in short-term, transient work, often online but not always
  • often seen by a platform like uber
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12
Q

Astroturfing
definition

A

(linkig it to artificial grass that covers a soccer field), this practice of generating “fake buzz” (or opposition) is being applied in commercial and political realms and is driven by algorithms and machine learning that can be said to constitute a form of AI

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13
Q

Globalization
definition

A
  • Markets, technology, cultures, and businesses are blended, becoming accessible everywhere globally
  • term also refers to the process of moving jobs and capital to where they will get the biggest return (jobs moving to low-wadge countries)
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14
Q

Copyright infringment
definition

A
  • the use of copyrighted materials without permission
  • normally, in a digital age
  • copying a song, movie or text without payment or permission
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15
Q

Digital Rights Management
definition

A
  • in response to copyright issues in the media and entertainment, often are aggressive
  • ## at the technological level, there is a focus on the development on technological protection measures (TPMs), and digital rights management (DRM)
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16
Q

Open-source Movement (alternative internet)

A

Open-software and free-software movements have pioneered decentralized, networked, and collaborative initiatives developing new forms of software licensed through non-proprietorial general public licences

  • not only can users acquire the software at no cost, but they can also get access to the source code, which they can apply, modify, or reconfigure

Underpinning the emergence of this large community of software developers are a series of broad principles:

  • A general belief in freely available content
  • A belief that collaborative, non-proprietorial initiatives ultimately generate better product and that open source has a compelling commercial, as well as moral, logic
  • An implicit belief in the value of a gift economy
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17
Q

Panopticon
definition

A

A prison design where all inmates were always in view of an unseen camera and would therefore police themselves since they never knew when they were being watched

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18
Q

Platform Society
definition

A
  • social relations and culture that build up within a platform economy
  • including new jobs (content creator, influencer)
  • new norms of influence and celebrity, new ways of entertainment (netflix)
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19
Q

What are Networked Publics Simtoaneously?

A
  1. the space constructed through networked technologies, &
  2. the imagined community that emerges from the intersection of people, technology, and practice.
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20
Q

What do Networked Publics Afford their Users?

A

Affordance

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21
Q

Affordance of Networked Publics

A

Networked publics have different characteristics than traditional physical public spaces. Four affordances shape the mediated environments that are created by social media. Although these affordances are not in and of themselves new, their relation to one another because of networked publics creates new opportunities and challenges. They are:
- persistence: the durability of online expressions and content;
- visibility: the potential audience who can bear witness;
- spreadability: the ease with which content can be shared
- searchability: the ability to find content.

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22
Q

what do public networks inhabit for teens?

A

Paradoxically, the networked publics they inhabit allow them a measure of privacy and autonomy that is not possible at home, where parents and siblings are often listening in

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23
Q

how workers navigate platforms

A
  • YouTube creators have to manage questions of respectability and representation. Too far in any one direction, and they might lose audience—or worse, face demonetization from YouTube.
  • Over time, Youtubers have seen a depreciation in the value of their work, as YouTube has sought to capture more of that value for itself.

-On other platforms, access to monetary compensation can be shaped by everything from audience demand to geography.

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24
Q

the key question arising from DRM strategies

A
  • whether the cost of DRM justifies its status as the primary solution to the current dilemma
25
Q

What are the 3 adverse DRM consequences?

A
  • First, diminished consumer privacy
  • Second, reduced innovation potential
  • Third, greater imbalances in the relationship between copyright holders and users (you don’t “own” your textbook or your music. You own a license to access them)

Alternately, the music industry and YouTube (and others) have settled into an uneasy truce over music videos in large part due to a system of revenue sharing for “official” videos

26
Q

eCommerce forms

A

eCommerce takes several forms, depending on the degree of digitization:
- the product or service sold
- the transaction process,
- the nature of the delivery agent or intermediary

  • important to distinguish between business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B)
  • has been estimated to account for over 90% of all electronic commerce transactions and business-to-consumer electronic commerce (B2C).
27
Q

platform economy

A
  • Digital economies have settled into a familiar pattern known as the economy, and even the platform society
  • Media & business transactions & interactions are not just being transferred to an online world but are also being wholly hosted and enabled by large players who build entire privately-owned ecosystems for interaction, conversations, and commerce that live entirely on a single service (e.g., Facebook, Amazon).
28
Q

governing the internet

A
  • Legal implications of the internet’s rapid development are complicated by the ways it relates to existing laws, regulatory frameworks, and the ideas that underpin them
  • Networked information is intangible, geographically distributed, and continually changing in its form and character
  • Fluidity of the online environment, as activities are frequently non-transparent, communication can be anonymous, and evidence can be erased or altered
29
Q

internet policy

A
  • Internet and business (e.g., commerce, internet fraud, internet tax issues)
  • Internet and medicine (e.g., telemedicine, online prescribing, online pharmacies)
  • Internet and telecommunications fairness (e.g., broadband development, throttling and access, gender and race online, poverty and unequal access to the internet)
  • Internet and education (e.g., plagiarism, fair dealing in education)
  • Free speech issues (e.g., freedom of expression, online defamation
  • Intellectual property issues (e.g., copyright law, patent law, trademark law)
  • Privacy issues (e.g., personal information privacy, data security)
  • Security issues (e.g., cybercrime, online stalking and harassment, identity theft)
  • Political rights (e.g., access rights, online democracy experiments, national firewalls)
30
Q

governance

A
  • Internet regulation can be understood as governance rather than law or policy.

-The concept of governance recognizes links between the public and private sectors.

-There is an understanding of the various roles played in internet law and policy, as well as the ways in which such processes increasingly cross territorial jurisdictions.

  • The concept of internet governance is helpful as an alternative to solid notions of cyber-libertarianism, which view the infrastructure of the internet as manageable through self-governance.
31
Q

governance (Cyber-libertarianism)

A
  • Cyber-libertarianism was a key tenet of Internet pioneers of the 1990s, but it is no longer articulated as strongly as it was in the mid-1990s.
  • As the Internet has grown and the user base has become more diverse, the notion of a shared ethos is less applicable. Authors and activists also note the danger of the cyber-libertarian position’s failure to address questions of corporate power.
32
Q

Governance
(the global nature of the Internet and its network infrastructure as compared to the primarily national basis of laws and legal systems.)

A

This problem is magnified by the uncertainties related to legal and territorial online jurisdiction

  • There have been many instances of jurisdictional conflict over content
  • Global pressure has been exerted on Google, Twitter, and Facebook over issues such as fake news and the posting of live videos of upsetting events
  • Social media platforms have fought against legal requirements and political pressure to reveal certain information
33
Q

Political Economy

A
  • The early promise of the internet as a democratic and decentralized alternative to commercial mass media was swept aside as governments around the world deregulated communications systems in the 1990s to give greater power to dominant commercial interests.
  • Like with the telephone and radio, the big tech players grew.
  • Information policy mirrored the market societies in which it operated. In corporate-dominated societies, these powerful entities most effectively shape government policy to suit their interests.
34
Q

Regulatory Capture example
[Federal Communication Commission (FCC)]

A
  • In the U.S., the Federal Communication Commission regulates communication infrastructure
  • In 2005, Former FCC Chair Michael K Powell retired after holding the Chair for four years
  • In 2011, he was hired as CEO of the National Cable & Telecomm Association, a lobbyist organization that advocates for major telecom players. Powell’s connections and clout make him a powerful player in shaping policy.
  • In 2019, the Project of Govt Oversight released a study raising flags over how industry actors shape FCC policy.
  • If the regulatory body listens mostly to telecom providers, do they really serve the public interest?
35
Q

The Revolving Door

A
  • The revolving door is a helpful concept for understanding how regulatory capture operates.
  • In the U.S., this is a well-studied phenomenon. In Canada, less so.
  • Recently, using December 2021 data from the federal Registry of Lobbyists, LinkedIn, and news media, The Regulatory Capture Lab sought to map three ways industry controls government tech policy in Canada.
36
Q

The Revolving Door – Exit Stage

A
  • exit stage refers to when a Government Official exits public office for a private
    position that is close to whatever field they previously regulated.
  • “In the Registry of Lobbyists for example, Facebook’s Canadian Head of Public Policy, Kevin Chan, is not registered as a company lobbyist per se, merely noted as a “Senior Officer”. Chan previously worked for the Liberal Party of Canada, including as Director of Policy to Michael Ignatieff, and was Director of Policy and Research at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The Commissioner oversees compliance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, a federal law that governs how private companies like Facebook collect, use, and disclose Canadians’ personal data.”.
37
Q

The Revolving Door – Entry Stage

A
  • The Entry Stage describes when private sector executives leave their positions to
    “enter” public office. They are often tasked with regulating their former sector. In Canada, this kind of move is not regulated.
  • “Consider Leslie Church. In 2015, she left her role as Head of Communications and Public Affairs at Google to join the Liberal Party of Canada’s back office. She served as a Chief of Staff in multiple departments, including the Minister of Canadian Heritage, a key ministry in the regulating, funding, and taxation of digital content, including content on Google’s YouTube. Church is currently Director of Policy for Chrystia Freeland, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance.”
38
Q

copyright (issues)

A

Of the many issues that render copyright law ever more complex and significant in an age of new media and the internet, there are four particularly worthy of attention:

  • First, the rapid development and mass distribution of technologies that enable low-cost reproduction of data and information have dramatically changed the issues associated with copyright law
  • Second, the rise of a knowledge-based or creative economy has seen intellectual property rights become a key source of new corporate wealth
  • Third, copyrighted products are now a part of global popular culture to a historically unprecedented degree
  • Fourth, copyright and intellectual property law has been progressively globalized over time
39
Q

90s Imagined an End to Copyright

A

Libertarians such as John Perry
Barlow (1996) predicted the collapse of copyright law under the weight of new media.

However, copyright and intellectual property laws have in fact been strengthened since the rise of the internet, raising the question of how best to manage the balance of interests.

40
Q

Tech, New Media, Globalization
(NEW MEDIA)

A

New media is central to globalization because it constitutes the borderless technological and service-delivery platforms streaming the images, information, finance, and communication that make up a globalized world.

● New media industries are leaders in the push for corporations to expand and integrate themselves globally.

● New media provides informational content and images of the world through which people make sense of events in distant places.

● It also has a perceived role in weakening the cultural bonds that tie people to nation-states and national communities.
○ This is not always the case, though!

41
Q

tech, new media, globalization
(GLOBALIZATION)

A

Globalization is used as an omnibus term to describe and make sense of a collection of interrelated processes, including the ever-increasing international flows of people, money, and information supporting
trade, production, finance, and cultural industries.

● Globalization can also be seen in the increasing reliance on international standards, rules, laws, and practices.

● We have seen a rise in anti-globalization forces and movements, including protests such as Trump’s cancellation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and Brexit.

Debates are ongoing about the degree to which globalization has become the central feature of our times, between those who believe that globalization should be welcomed and those concerned that it erodes local communities and identities.

● Some critical theorists and activists argue that the rise of global capitalism has reconfigured the terrain of political struggle, while others argue that it is just the latest stage in the development of capitalism as a world system.

● Globalization also has an ideological or conceptual aspect as well as an economic one. Canadian journalist and writer Naomi Klein has written a series of books on the globalization process, with specific attention to the meaning ascribed to these trends

● A countervailing trend, economic nationalism (and nationalism generally), is gaining ground in both Europe and North America.

42
Q

Globalization & Work

A
  • Economic globalization is more established than political, legal, or cultural globalization.
  • labour force globalization is a key component of a knowledge economy.
    • labour is a driving the force behind the processing and creation of information, which develops into knowledge
  • despite globalization, humans do not have equal access to information.
43
Q

Rise of Knowledge Economies

A

The knowledge economy is both a historical trend of the past hundred years and a process that has accelerated since the early 1990s. Trends driving this is plural:

● The growing diversity of sources from which new knowledge is accessed (e.g., users as a source of innovation)

● The role played by networked ICTs in accelerating the diffusion of new knowledge and the possibilities for collaboration

● The ways in which ICTs enable new forms of codification of once-tacit knowledge through knowledge-management systems. For example: Quercus.

● The importance of knowledge sharing through cross-institutional and cross-sectoral knowledge communities, of which the open-source software movement maybe one of the most globally significant

production are becoming more complex and sophisticated, with more knowledge and skills required. Examples:

● Consumers face increasingly complex decisions about evaluating the quality of goods and services on offer

● There is an increasing reliance on specialist or idiosyncratic skills

● The use and transfer of information is becoming increasingly important in economic and social activities, and uncertainty about what lies behind the devices and services we use is increasingly central to all aspects of economic and social life

44
Q

eCommerce
(businesses have no choice)

A

commonly held view that businesses have no choice but to develop an eCommerce strategy, which can help the company:

● Take advantage of the expansion of the available marketplace from geographically defined local markets to national and international markets

● Reduce the costs of creating, processing, distributing, storing, and retrieving information, both within the organization and between the organization and its clients

45
Q

eCommerce
(organization view)

A

Organizations can also benefit from the ability to develop highly specialized
businesses

● Target particular niche consumer groups while at the same time enjoying a reduction of inventory and overhead costs

● This creates a move toward “pull-type” supply chain management, where processes begin with customer orders and enable just-in-time production
○ With ongoing development in automated production and delivery, wait times are getting shorter and shorter

● These customized products and services provide competitive advantages based on “first-mover” status and brand loyalty

46
Q

eCommerce
(consumers)

A

For consumers, the advantages of eCommerce include the ability to undertake transactions 24 hours a day, from any networked location, for a vastly increased range of products and services

● People can compare prices online and find the lowest-cost provider with minimal search cost

● A growing segment of the market is devoted to websites and services that provide these comparisons for consumers

● Consumers enjoy quick delivery of products and services (mainly if they are in digitized form) and the ability to interact with other consumers in virtual communities

47
Q

eCommerce Infrastructure

A

One important implication of electronic commerce for distribution has
been related to the processes of disintermediation and intermediation

  • disintermediation provides the opportunity for producers and consumers to access each other directly
  • Reintermediation occurs when intermediary functions remain but are conducted by organizations whose operations are driven by the new ecommerce marketing logics: partnerships with consumers, “permission” advertising, product and service customization, and multiple modes of communication with consumers (e.g., Amazon)
48
Q

Working in a Platform Economy
(GIG ECONOMY)

A

Hiring oneself through online services has become a significant part of the modern labour market and platform life.

● Known as the gig economy, this platform-enabled workforce generated over $200 billion in transactions in 2018. A significant proportion of those “gigs” (58 per cent in 2018) are related to transportation (e.g., Lyft, Uber). None of these make money and are now undergoing real struggles to figure out a pathway to viability.

● For participants in the gig economy, there are benefits (additional income) but also risks (e.g., lack of health benefits). Some worry that the participants in the gig economy are being taken advantage of, with examples of people not even making minimum wage

● There are also privacy considerations since most of these platforms enable considerable monitoring of the workers

49
Q

Knowledge push
(KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY)

A

The growth in outputs in education and scientific research arising from public and private investment and the ways in which ICTs speed up the production, collection, and dissemination of such research outcomes

50
Q

Market pull
(KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY)

A
  • economic globalization
  • increased competition
  • greater sophistication in consumer demand
  • growing importance of intangible assets
51
Q

Surveillance Capitalism

A

User behaviour is meticulously tracked and, along with preferences and “likes,” becomes data that can be sold to third parties for marketing purposes or other surveillance-related activities

When digital tech giant needs to figure out profitability, they turn to advertising

● Surveillance means using the data you’re moving around the Internet (and space/time) generates to target ads back at you

● In this framing, your data in aggregate becomes something of enormous financial value

● Generates what John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney call “ ” that drives long-term growth based on the data that firms aggregate will one day be worth something more.

52
Q

surveillance

A

Mobile phone traffic is of particular interest to these types of surveillance programs, in part because it contains a great deal of metadata

○ This data can be collected and used with other people’s data to show where you are and who is with you

○ Security agencies have been able to use computers and networks along with (oftentimes secret) court orders to force access to vast troves of data

● Employees may also be subject to tracking from systems as a requirement of the job

● Other uses of these tracking systems include locating people in emergencies

53
Q

data brokers (data mining)

A

The buying and selling of personal data in bulk have become a lucrative industry under surveillance capitalism.

● Data brokers buy and sell large sets of data about consumers. The value of their data sets emerges out of targeted advertising.

● They turn public and private data into market segments.

54
Q

Gillespie & platforms

A

“platform carries with a discursive positioning”

“Platform” provides a malleable metaphor that can and has been used to connect mature content creators with audiences so that the advertisers who hope to monetize this relationship find a home

55
Q

EG.. platforms (facebok)

A

facebook

  • hosts personal profiles
  • business profiles
  • carries messages in Facebook app and through subsidiary systems like WhatsApp, sound and video formats
  • enables transactions through Facebook Marketplace
56
Q

EG.. platform (amazon)

A
  • selling products from millions of companies
  • some products online some physical
  • conversations on the products remain on amazon (ratings, reviews, comments)
  • ## “user” and “consumer” line gone as many people sell and buy on amazon
57
Q

rise of the knowledge-based or creative economy

A

commercial creative industries are characterized by:
- high initial cost to produce original material
-high failure rate of new products
- near-zero cost of content reproduction
-high premium is attached to successful creative product that is likely to make economic wealth over time

58
Q

fields of demographics
(surveillance & privacy)

A
  • fields of demographics (who we are)
  • geo-demographics (where we are)
  • psycho-graphics (how we think and what we think)
  • all large parts of data and processing power in computers