3. Networked andAffective public

Question 1

Irony is used for what?

Answer 1

To subvert political power

Question 2

Why does social media complicates publicness?

Answer 2

Blurred boundaries between private and public, also blurred boundaries between public and audiences.

Question 3

Audiences

Answer 3

being part of a community that is consuming a certain media content/culture.

Question 4

Public

Answer 4

being part of a national community that shares a culture and set of values and norms. Shared idea of what is for the common good as a society (polarisation has damaged and decreased this a lot)

Question 5

For Habermas the public is what?

Answer 5

an in-between level between the public institution and the privacy of everyday life → has to do with civil participation and not openly political.

Question 6

The media only began to be partisan with…

Answer 6

Cable television

Question 7

According to Habermas the media shifted how?

Answer 7

From: their public role of providing reliable accounts of political events
To: business enterprise

Question 8

What are some critics of Habermas’ ideas?

Answer 8

• His idea of the public sphere was quite elitist and not very inclusive. Not only the idea of being a man but the quality of the public debate.
• Empirical evidence: not all public debates that happen in the public sphere are rational deliberation. Politics is not only part rationality and has a lot to do with emotions. Emotions affect identity.

Question 9

The media has always. been used to…

Answer 9

sustain and maintain collective identities

Question 10

Shared temporalities

Answer 10

temporal structure that the media enables. The radio first and then television. Provided people living in a certain country to feel temporal structure at a certain level

Question 11

What is the conundrum of viability?

Answer 11

That now everyone can broadcast themselves (individuals) to a global audience. The problem is even though everyone can communicate and share their own views and content→ the visibility of the continent is regulated by mechanisms that exceed our control.

Question 12

Which boundaries are blurred in social media?

Answer 12

Being part of the public is being part of the citizenship

Question 13

What are networked publics?

Answer 13

• A space constructed through networks.
• Refers to the possibility of social media to connect people and mass but also to connect the communicative space that is created by social media and help people maintain conversations in the public.

Question 14

What are some affordance of networked publics?

Answer 14

• Persistence
• Replicability
• Scalability
• Searchability

Question 15

Persistence:

Answer 15

online expressions are automatically recorded and archived. Nothing disappears once it has been published.

Question 16

Replicability:

Answer 16

content made out of bits can be duplicated. This is the fundamental characteristics between digital and analogue info (?) → the “copy paste”

Question 17

Scalability;

Answer 17

the potential visibility of content in networked publics is great. Its reach can exceed our target audiences, it can be duplicated out of context

Question 18

Searchability:

Answer 18

content in networked publics can be accessed through search.

Question 19

What are the dynamics of networked publics?

Answer 19

• Invisible audiences
• Collapsed context
• The blurring of private and public

Question 20

Invisible audiences→

Answer 20

not all audiences are visible when a person is contributing online, nor are they necessarily co-present. The problem is that sometimes these audiences materialize and interact with what we share.

Question 21

Collapsed context→

Answer 21

The lack of spatial, social and temporal boundaries makes it difficult to maintain distinct social contexts. Emergence of scalability and collapsed context

Question 22

Context collusion →

Answer 22

ability to communicate at the same time with diverse targets and to broaden your followers (audiences). Politicians, activists and influencers exploit this.

Question 23

The blurring of private and public→

Answer 23

without control over context, public and private become meaningless binaries, are scaled in new ways, and are scaled in new ways and are difficult to maintain as distinct.

Question 24

The social media logic consists of 4 mechanisms. Which ones?

Answer 24

Programmability
Popularity:
Connectivity:
Datafication:

Question 25

Programmability:

Answer 25

The fact that our interaction and actions are actually analyzed and manipulated by algorithms.

Question 26

Popularity:

Answer 26

celebrities and VIP users benefit from greater visibility on Social media. but popularity on social media is manipulable and new kinds of celebrities can emerge. → those who are able to exploit these metrics to their advantage.

Question 27

Connectivity:

Answer 27

monetization of actions. Social media did not prevent certain kinds of content like hate speech because it is engaging which generates higher views→ higher profit.

Question 28

Datafication:

Answer 28

Shifting boundaries that complicate publicness in a way for some users it's easier to participate in public discussion on social media than in life

Question 29

What are some challenges of networked publics?

Answer 29

- Target/primary imagined audience vs active audience (schwartz, 2017) - Hate Speech (Ekström, 2016; Thorson, 2014) - Political neutrality (Thorson, 2014) - echo chambers and filter bubbles - Lack of accountability : decentralized and anonymous interactions make it difficult to hold users accountable for harmful behaviour

Question 30

How should we look at social media?

Answer 30

We shall look at social media as an betweenness where the plurality of individuals is materialized. Out inbetweenness is not rational (we do not take the decision to participate in it or not) it's an existential condition.

Question 31

Social media is where what?

Answer 31

Social media is where affects can be actualized into feelings and emotions.

Question 32

What happens when Affect is socialised?

Answer 32

- Affect once it is socialised and made collective it turns into emotions and feelings. - Affect is not rational and not conscious but because of the way we discuss on social media is turned into feelings which can be politically mobilized

Question 33

What are the platform specific news value?

Answer 33

- Instanteneity - Crowdsourced elites - Solidarity - Ambience and affective news

Question 34

Instantaneity

Answer 34

the events are told as they are formed

Question 35

Crowdsourced elites

Answer 35

reputation and acknowledgement and popularity metrics. New elites in the production of news.

Question 36

Solidarity

Answer 36

the Arab Spring then in 2011 were the first examples that showed how the regimes could use the same tools as the activists (social media) not for mobilising but for surveillance. Solidarity is also for people from other places in the world to use their devices when this happened (ex, proxy or mirrored a deceive in Milan to live stream the movement in Iran so the devices could not be tracked back to its owner back in Teheran)

Question 37

Ambience and affective news:

Answer 37

like ambient music. Continuous constant flow of info (not necessarily new). But it is always there, resonating.

Question 38

What is another thing about ambience and affective news?

Answer 38

Cognitive value is low but emotional value is effective --> do not engage the reader cognitively (they don't get new information) but it does emotionally (they just get a sense of emotional urgency).

Question 39

What is the form of affective news?

Answer 39

Blending of emotion with opinion, drama with fact --> Patterns of repetition and mimicry --> premediation and predisposition to frame the future

Question 40

What is the problem with hate speech ?

Answer 40

That there is no consistent definition for this term

Question 41

hate speech is intention based because

Answer 41

There is intentionality in hate speech. Haters intentionally disseminate offensive and hostile language. The reason why they do so may not always be rational.

Question 42

Hate speech is part of what wider problem?

Answer 42

Political Incivility which is being normalized

Question 43

Who produces hate speech?

Answer 43

- organized hate groups: they use the internet to recruit and expand their rate and gain more visibility (ex, video games)--> young people are specially vulnerable

Question 43

Who produces hate speech? pt2

Answer 43

- Informal groups and individuals: They find themselves online. And their feelings resonate with the ones of others. They communicate strategically. Start with soft language and then end up more malicious and violent language because of the decreased perception of social stigma.

Question 44

Who produces hate speech? pt3

Answer 44

- Highly networked structure of hateful users: Echo chambers explain why there is an escalation of hate speeches. Because when they are reinforced by their own opinions and to be accepted by the community they will become more radical. But they are not members of clearly defined groups but they nonetheless act and operate as a network. - The culture where this kind of discourse is where an invented tradition with the belief that a traditional past should be recovered, cult of masculinity and worship of technology as it would help them establish supremacy.

Question 45

Who are the targets of Hate speech?

Answer 45

- mostly celebrities or VIP persons because what public figures do is more visible than what a citizen does. Also because sometimes these celebrities represent a group so when they attack them they are attacking the entire group. - individuals

Question 46

The popularity of hate speech

Answer 46

- The overall volume of hate speech has not increased over time - Yet it is increasingly visible and incidental exposure has grown - Algorithmic visibility - IT IS NOT MORE POPULAR JUST MORE VISIBLE

Question 47

What are some strategies for content moderation?

Answer 47

- Automated moderation (AI, algorithms) - Human moderation - Community-based moderation - Shadowbanning and demotion

Question 48

Automated moderation

Answer 48

Pros: Fast and scalable. They work 24/7 across large platforms Cons: Can misinterpret context (like irony). Overlook certain references (steganography), often overblocks or underblocks content, lack of transparency in how decisions are made

Question 49

Human Moderation

Answer 49

Pros: Better at understanding cultural context and nuances. Can handle difficult or borderline cases Cons: Underpaid. Expensive and slow. Moderators face emotional harm from repeated exposure to violent or hateful content. Enormous amount of hate comments for one modertor. the ratio is too big.

Question 50

Community- based moderation (community notes)

Answer 50

Pros : Encourage user involvement and can reflect democratic values Cons: easily manipulated by organized groups, reflects majority bias which can harm minority voices, takes too long, most note arent seen --> issue remains unsolved

Question 51

Shadowbanning and Demotion

Answer 51

Pros: Reduces amplification without censorship. Less likely to trigger free speech debates Cons: Often not transparent to users. Can suppress legitimate voices unfairly