CDSMR Abstracts

ABSTRACTS contrary, national news agencies and local media feature as prominent news sources. In addition, radical right media share each other's news to produce a greater output 1: Racist & Right-Wing Discourse of content despite budget constraints. Ultimately, radical right media online are defned not so much by the sharing Racism on Social Media: A Critical Review of of “fake” (false) news, but rather by the fact that 1) they Methodological Challenges ofen select and focus on a narrow set of topics (such as Johan Farkas, Malmö University immigration and crime) 2) they frame these topics in strongly biased ways; 3) they share each other’s content extensively. Thus, classical media theories on agenda Social media platforms have altered how social setting and framing are much more helpful in interactions take place online. This new era of user understanding current transformations in digital media practices, micro-communication cultures, bots, and an than the techno-deterministic dystopias of “fake news” increasing algorithmic shaping of sociability, opens up spread by trolls and bots. Only if we investigate carefully new research endeavours to understand how racism the mechanisms and operations of online radical right articulates on social media platforms. Research points to media can we start thinking of adequate alternatives. the need of studying racism and other forms of systemic Because it is precisely political alternatives and not oppression as the result of user practices and technological technological solutions to “fake news” that we need. mediation. In the realm of social media, key technological features - such as anonymity, interactivity, connectivity and datafcation - are tactically exploited to create new The importance of influential actors’ platform usage modalities of ‘platformed racism’. However, access to data patterns in (re)producing Swedish far-right discourse on Twitter. is gradually becoming scarce, as platforms increasingly Mathilda Åkerlund, DIGSUM, Umeå University close of their Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), while new opaque platforms, such as WhatsApp and WeChat, pose challenges for empirical research. This Using a combination of descriptive statistics, sentiment article presents a literature review of 113 scholarly articles analysis and close readings of a collection of 74,336 on racism and social media published between 2014 and Swedish tweets, this paper explores the platform usage 2018, collected through Google Scholar and Web of patterns of users who are infuential in a Swedish far- Science (of an initial sample of 270 articles). The article right discourse on Twitter. Specifcally, it focuses on frst examines the geographical scope and overall infuential users’ usage of platform functions, and on their methodologies described in the literature. Secondly, the language use. The analysis shows that infuential users article presents an in-depth analysis of the methodological have a narrow focus in terms of the content they post and and ethical challenges of studying racism on social media. how they profle themselves. They are highly active, have Based on this analysis, the article critically discusses the more followers and produce more original content than overall limitations of the feld, possibilities of overcoming other users. Surprisingly, while previous research has these as well as future problems posed by increasing found that emotionally charged tweets are retweeted more opacity and social media companies’ questionable and that highly popular and infuential Twitter users tend arrangements to collaborate and support research. to express more emotion while tweeting, infuential users in this dataset ofen posted far-right content concealed as neutral, factual statements. This use of seemingly neutral Why talking about “fake news” misses the point? The sources, topics, and news-sharing patterns of radical right language creates an inclusive far-right context as well as media in Europe. facilitates more overtly hateful interpretations. Julia Eduards Rone, Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society 2: Digital Labour (A) The current paper argues that critical digital media research should take into account the ultimately Labour Process Theory and the Automation of Machine Learning Labour. ideological nature of the discourse on “fake news” and James Steinhoff, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, move beyond it to reveal the empirical reality that it has University of Western Ontario, London, Canada obscured so far. We focus explicitly on the political profle of media and perform an in-depth empirical analysis of the sources, topics, and social media sharing patterns of This paper argues for the relevance of labour process ten popular radical right news websites in Europe: the theory (LPT) to the study of digital media, but also points transnational Voice of Europe, Epoch Times, Jouwatch, out a signifcant difculty. LPT has rarely been applied to Politically Incorrect News in Germany, Il Primato sofware production, and as far as I know, never to Nazionale, Secolo d’Italia and VoxNews in Italy, artifcial intelligence (AI) production. I frst briefy Westmonster, Order-Order and PoliticalUK in the UK. describe the LPT approach, its detailed empirical study of Little empirical evidence is found to support the narrative the workplace and production processes and its central of “fake news” ofen associated with these media. On the focus on the deskilling and automation of labour by 1 “I guess I can’t call you beautiful bastards anymore”: capital. I discuss how its adherents have disagreed over the YouTube Monetization, Censorship, & Platform/Labor nature of sofware work and whether it might be Relations. inherently exempt from deskilling and automation due to Nicole E. Weber , Media Studies, Rutgers University its high-skill, social type of labour—a position also held by post-operaist and cognitive capitalism theorists. On April 3, 2018 Nasim Aghdam entered YouTube company headquarters and began shooting. Wounding three people before taking her own life, Aghdam’s actions My argument proceeds by outlining the labour process for were reportedly in response to feeling wrongly censored the production of the contemporary form of AI called and subsequently de-monetized on the platform (Meyer, machine learning (ML). I then show how high skill work 2018). Beginning in 2016—and accelerating following in ML production is already being automated in three the 2017 “Adpocolypse”—YouTube has rolled out multiple areas. ML is now widely recognized as leading a new wave changes to the platform’s algorithms, monetization, and of workplace automation, but the automation of the policies for content standards. In the wake of these production of ML itself (AutoML) or “the automation of changes, major tensions and anxieties between content automating automation” (Mayo 2016) has barely been creators and YouTube have increasingly become more discussed. I argue that ML work is evidently not immune visible (Weiss, 2017). Analyzing testimonies from content to deskilling and automation. Based on interviews creators about their relationships with YouTube and the conducted with ML workers, I show that some actually platform in light of previous scholarship on social network desire increased automation in their work and have the exploitation (Andrejevic, 2011; Cohen, 2015), theories of capacities to create and deploy AutoML themselves. Said immaterial labor (Cote & Pybus, 2007; Terranova, one interviewee: “If you’re doing the same thing for more 2000; Lazzarato, 1996), and examinations of other social than six months and not automating it – you’re doing media production cultures (Chen, 2014; Marwick, 2013), something wrong”. This situation does not easily ft into this study aims to develop a fuller picture of the tensions critical theoretical frameworks such as LPT in which the between platform and producer. I suggest that an worker and automation are positioned as antipodal. I exploration of these tensions and anxieties will not only conclude by considering the prospects of workers help us more deeply understand the relationship between automating their own work and what this means for LPT. content creators and platforms, but will also provide better context for the event of April 3rd. If we read The Maker Movement and the Politics of Invention. Aghdam’s actions as not isolated but rather as a moment Stefano Mazzilli-Daechsel, School of Public Policy, of rupture produced through these platform tensions and Sociology, and Social Research, University of Kent anxieties, we see the very real and increasingly intensifying implications of the control platforms have over creators’ production. Ultimately, I consider the future of platformed The maker movement consists of people collaborating in labor relations if platforms and the companies that digital and physical spaces to design and make their own produce them continue to remain unregulated moving electronics. Based on my doctoral research of several forward. European makerspaces, this paper discusses the ways in which makers practice a diferent politics of invention. I start by defning a politics of invention as the dynamics ‘Digital Passioneers’ - Literary Review Blogs between Fan Culture, Literary Criticism and Unwaged Digital Labour. between human and technological capacities, as well as the distribution of those capacities. Next, I assess the Kristina Petzold, University of Hildesheim hegemonic politics of invention operating under the material conditions

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