DOCSLIB.ORG

Twitter and Tear Gas 1St Edition Ebook Free Download

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Twitter and Tear Gas 1St Edition Ebook Free Download TWITTER AND TEAR GAS 1ST EDITION PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Zeynep Tufekci | 9780300228175 | | | | | Twitter and Tear Gas 1st edition PDF Book They did this in their spare time, with no funding, fueled only by grit, creativity, and caffeine preferably from coffee shops with free Wi-Fi. So how must the structure of political protests stratergise to have an impact and change? She is clearly a progressive, whereas I am not, but she is clear- eyed about her own bias, and is willing to turn her insight on sacred cows of her own part of the political spectrum. Tufekci's book provides just that—and a cautionary conclusion. Jul 20, John Jr. And does it matter that most of the movements she analyzes are left-leaning? Skip to main content. Sep 15, tash rated it liked it. The keepers of the status quo, can change their tactics, in some cases better than the structureless resistance movements that one might have expected to be the more agile. However overall it's a very valuable book. None of those dilemmas have gone away, but some of them have been dramatically transformed. Anyone, regardless of how much money she or he has, can check out a book, and a book is passed from person to person in a chain of knowledge sharing. Welcome back. Author: Justin Sherman Justin Sherman. Egyptian youths use laptops to post videos of the protests in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Feb. Author: Tom Simonite Tom Simonite. National Affairs politics protests Social Media longreads longreads. Digital technologies had clearly transformed the landscape, seemingly to the benefit of political challengers. On television, all I could see was an undifferentiated mass of people, an indistinct crowd. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Twitter and Tear Gas 1st edition Writer Joshua A. Zeynep came to Baltimore to do a panel discussion on the intersection of technology and democracy, so I had to go. Learn how to enable JavaScript on your browser. A journey of discovery into the lives and contributions of three forgotten women, obscured by They accomplished this feat through creativity and youthful determination, but it would have been nearly impossible without Twitter, Google spreadsheets, text messaging, and cell phones. Zeynep Tufekci About Zeynep Tufekci writes about technology, politics, and society. Besides taking care of tasks, the drudgery of traditional organizing helps create collective decision-making capabilities, sometimes through formal and informal leadership structures, and builds a collective capacity among movement participants through shared experience and tribulation. Lily Hay Newman. So how must the structure of political protests stratergise to have an impact and change? Tufekci discusses protest movements, mainly from the recent past but occasionally further back, in terms of what she calls signals and capacities. If authorities control the public sphere, how will activists coordinate? View Comments. This is such a book. Tufekci is not an especially young woman, but she has a very youthful appearance. To her credit, she does a good job of summarizing the model in both the introduction and conclusion. There is a new, radically different mode of information and attention flow: the chaotic world of the digitally networked public sphere or spheres where ordinary citizens or activists can generate ideas, document and spread news of events, and respond to mass media. Description A firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements' greatest strengths and frequent challenges. So, you have to crack it open with that level of patience and interest. But it left one ISP unblocked, and its heavy-handed attempt itself generated news. Read more In the photo on the back cover flap, she not only looks young, but is also wearing a bike helmet. At first glance the book seems mainly about the Arab Spring protests — in which Twitter famously played a role, and which Tufekci witnessed first-hand — but the scope is much wider. Twitter and Tear Gas 1st edition Reviews The capacity is its ability to for example command a narrative, to disrupt the status quo, or to effect legislative or structural change. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. She argues that digital connectivity reshapes how movements connect, organise and evolve over their lifespans and explains how the affordances of technology change their trajectories and their capacities; how repres Building on her own experiences from the Zapatistas to Gezi Square in Istanbul, interactions with activists across movements from Occupy to Tahrir and BlackLivesMatter, Tufekci draws interesting lessons on the differences between movements in the digital era compared with prior ones. Basically I would recommend this book to everyone I know. However overall it's a very valuable book. Three areas of the book really stand out to me: her observations and anecdotes about how today's platforms enable very small groups of people to drive large movements very quickly; the advantages and disadvantages these movements have because they are generally consensually led rather than hierarchical, and the close relationship between users, the corporations of the social platforms they use, and their interaction with the nation-states in which they operate. She traces the ideals of interconnected, open networks that were posited as a technology-driven alternative to previous insider-based h A really interesting exploration of the use and impact of social media on the global protest waves of early in the millennium, a time when the culture of global movements was changing. Zeynep Tufekci. It's obvious that she's a pro, which was great because there was a protes Zeynep came to Baltimore to do a panel discussion on the intersection of technology and democracy, so I had to go. For a better shopping experience, please upgrade now. Protests are a "signal" of such capacities. Javascript is not enabled in your browser. The book also serves as an explainer to modern and more often than not, urban protest The book provides important conceptual frameworks to understand how both the protesters and the government can leverage social media and other digital tools to forward their cause and thwart opponents' efforts. The second third of the book was about the social media tools and ho This was deeper than I expected it to be. Lists with This Book. Also of Interest. Zeynep Tufekci writes about technology, politics, and society. Thanks for telling us about the problem. Of course, she never exactly says that it has stopped working, but it is clear that mass protests in the U. It changes the dynamics of the situation often the pioneers are the protesters who took new affordances of social media and used it in Arab spring but governments learn countermeasures just as quickly. View 1 comment. Read more The Muslim Brotherhood had won the election but had not managed to unseat the old guard from the state apparatus nor manage to win over the whole population—many people were alarmed at their acts in government, too. These people often have great influence, though they lack the formal legitimacy that an open and recognized process of selecting leaders would generate. Become an affiliate. But, so what? Occupy exemplifies a broader problem as well. If the politics of protest do not look like those of the past, neither do some of the obstacles the protesters face. So how must the structure of political protests stratergise to have an impact and change? Showing In , the Egyptian government rather crudely responded to the Tahrir Square protests by shutting down cell-phone and Internet service for a while. They accomplished this feat through creativity and youthful determination, but it would have been nearly impossible without Twitter, Google spreadsheets, text messaging, and cell phones. Movements are making their own history, but in circumstances and with tools not entirely of their own choosing. Once this large group is formed, however, it struggles because it has sidestepped some of the traditional tasks of organizing. She argues that digital connectivity reshapes how movements connect, organise and evolve over their lifespans and explains how the affordances of technology change their trajectories and their capacities; how repressive governments have adapted to dealing with networked protest; why the new movements fail to build decision-making structures and processes and, therefore, lack operational agility. Reviews "Tufekci believes that digital-age protests are not simply faster, more responsive versions of their mid-century parents. Instead, the first third of this book is about the Occupy movement and how it was similar to the occupation of Tahrir Square in Egypt and the Gezi Park protests in Turkey. If the only real, gut-level reason for a progressive to join a protest is that the act of mass protest is satisfying in and of itself, then there will obviously be deep-rooted resistance to the idea of trying something else instead. A protest is as much a political act as it is a humanitarian act, and the scaling demands to be with an agenda, qualitative and quantitative. Nov 29, Colleen rated it really liked it Recommends it for: sociologists. In a world of tweet-sized summary judgments, Tufekci provides readers with a depth of analysis and important insights that ought to be read by every diplomat and activist. The section on the presence of ad-hoc public libraries at street protests was particularly amusing and enlightening to me in this regard. Tufekci's years experience talking with protesters from Chiapas to Tahrir Square and Gezi Park informs her deep analysis of the nature of social movements and the "public sphere" in a world with nearly-ubiquitous internet. That makes it sound more pompous and theoretical than the book is - exploring instead the way Twitter and Facebook and Whats App are used to quickly mobilise, and seamlessly coordinate tasks which previously took full-time volunteers over months.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Social Internet: Frustrating, Enriching, but Not Lonely
    Public Culture The Social Internet: Frustrating, Enriching, but Not Lonely Zeynep Tufekci The “lonely world of cyberspace” is a curious example of the vast gap that every so often opens between an idea’s popularity among pun- dits (considerable) and its basis in empirical research (very little). In the past few years the New York Times has run multiple op- eds suggesting social media or our phones are eroding human connections (for example, Cohen 2012; Egan 2013; Foer 2013; Franzen 2011; Fredrickson 2013); the Atlantic ran a cover story ask- ing, “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” (Marche 2012); Massachusetts Institute of Technology psychologist Sherry Turkle wrote a book titled Alone Together (2011) that is partly about social media damaging “real world” human connections; and Pope Benedict warned youngsters not to replace their real friends with virtual ones (Benedict XVI 2011, 2009). In the meantime, a growing pile of empirical research shows that, if anything, the relationship runs the other way — Internet users are more social and less isolated. This curious “Freddy Krueger effect” — the inability of data to kill the endur- ing attractiveness of a theme — deserves unpacking that goes beyond an indication of its lack of empirical basis and appeal to moral panic. The Internet’s integration into sociality happened with such impressive speed that it is at once mundane, all around us, and yet also barely examined. In addition, the Internet’s qualitative and subjective impacts are harder to measure than simple indicators like use or penetration. Further, a technology as multifaceted and complex as the Internet not only will not produce a “main effect” — a single, homogeneous impact that applies to everyone and every type of use — but it may well have different consequences at systemic, individual, and historical scales.
    [Show full text]
  • Opinion | Youtube, the Great Radicalizer - the New York Times 03/11/2018, 0924
    Opinion | YouTube, the Great Radicalizer - The New York Times 03/11/2018, 0924 SUNDAY REVIEW SUNDAY REVIEW | YouTube, the Great Radicalizer Please disable your ad blocker. Advertising helps fund Times journalism. YouTube, the Great Radicalizer By Zeynep Tufekci March 10, 2018 At one point during the 2016 presidential election campaign, I watched a bunch of videos of Donald Trump rallies on YouTube. I was writing an article about his appeal to his voter base and wanted to confirm a few quotations. Soon I noticed something peculiar. YouTube started to recommend and “autoplay” videos for me that featured white supremacist rants, Holocaust denials and other disturbing content. Since I was not in the habit of watching extreme right-wing fare on YouTube, I was curious whether this was an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. So I created another YouTube account and started watching videos of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, letting YouTube’s recommender algorithm take me wherever it would. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html Page 1 of 5 Opinion | YouTube, the Great Radicalizer - The New York Times 03/11/2018, 0924 Before long, I was being directed to videos of a leftish conspiratorial cast, including arguments about the existence of secret government agencies and allegations that the United States government was behind the attacks of Sept. 11. As with the Trump videos, YouTube was recommending content that was more and more extreme than the mainstream political fare I had started with. Please disable your ad blocker. Advertising helps fund Times journalism. Intrigued, I experimented with nonpolitical topics.
    [Show full text]
  • Youtube, the Great Radicalizer, Zeynep Tufekci. New York Times, March 10, 2018
    YouTube, the Great Radicalizer, Zeynep Tufekci. New York Times, March 10, 2018. Zeynep Tufekci is an associate professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of “Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest.” At one point during the 2016 presidential election campaign, I watched a bunch of videos of Donald Trump rallies on YouTube. I was writing an article about his appeal to his voter base and wanted to confirm a few quotations. Soon I noticed something peculiar. YouTube started to recommend and “autoplay” videos for me that featured white supremacist rants, Holocaust denials and other disturbing content. Since I was not in the habit of watching extreme right-wing fare on YouTube, I was curious whether this was an exclusively right-wing phenomenon. So I created another YouTube account and started watching videos of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, letting YouTube’s recommender algorithm take me wherever it would. Before long, I was being directed to videos of a leftish conspiratorial cast, including arguments about the existence of secret government agencies and allegations that the United States government was behind the attacks of Sept. 11. As with the Trump videos, YouTube was recommending content that was more and more extreme than the mainstream political fare I had started with. Intrigued, I experimented with nonpolitical topics. The same basic pattern emerged. Videos about vegetarianism led to videos about veganism. Videos about jogging led to videos about running ultramarathons. It seems as if you are never “hard core” enough for YouTube’s recommendation algorithm.
    [Show full text]
  • Council of Europe Study Algorithms and Human Rights
    DGI(2017)12 STUDY ON THE HUMAN RIGHTS DIMENSIONS OF AUTOMATED DATA PROCESSING TECHNIQUES (IN PARTICULAR ALGORITHMS) AND POSSIBLE REGULATORY IMPLICATIONS PREPARED BY THE COMMITTEE OF EXPERTS ON INTERNET INTERMEDIARIES (MSI-NET) ALGORITHMS AND HUMAN RIGHTS Study on the human rights dimensions of automated data processing techniques and possible regulatory implications English edition The opinions expressed in this work are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the Council of Europe. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be translated, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from the Directorate of Communications (F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex or [email protected]). Cover page photo: Shutterstock Published by the Council of Europe F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex, www.coe.int © Council of Europe, March 2018 Council of Europe study Algorithms and Human Rights TABLE OF CONTENTS COMPOSITION OF THE MSI-NET ............................................................. 2 I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................. 3 II. THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY .............................................................. 5 1. AUTOMATION ................................................................................................ 5 2. DATA ANALYSIS ............................................................................................ 6 3. ADAPTABILITY..............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Lessons and Recommendations from the 2020 General Election
    S T R E N G T H E N I N G O U R E L E C T I O N S A N D P R E V E N T I N G E L E C T I O N C R I S E S : Lessons and Recommendations from the 2020 General Election Executive Summary The 2020 election was defined by paradox and contradiction. Thanks to millions of poll workers, election officials, and citizens who stepped up to make our democracy work, the election was secure and free from systemic or significant fraud. A record 160 million Americans voted and had their voices heard. Yet still, voter intimidation and racial disparities in access to the ballot continued, our election system was revealed to be aging and unnecessarily confusing, Americans weathered a wave of disinformation and, of course, there were unprecedented efforts to delegitimize and overturn the election results—ultimately leading to a crisis the likes of which we’ve not experienced in modern history. In the end, Congress counted all of the electoral votes, but only after President Trump sought to both coerce federal and state officials to overturn the results, and incited a violent insurrection. This attack on our democracy culminated with white supremacist rioters attacking the Capitol seeking to not only overturn the Constitutional order, but also to take hostages and assassinate members of Congress and the Vice President. While American democracy has survived this crisis so far, we will only be able to prevent the next one if we both 1) ensure accountability for all those who incited, abetted, and participated in the insurrection, and 2) adopt preventative reforms based on the lessons we learned in this election.
    [Show full text]
  • February 2021 PDC Newsletter
    Newsletter of the Pass Democratic Club—February 2021 Visit the Pass Democratic Club website: www.passdems.org and the Pass Democratic Club on Facebook and Twitter (@DemocraticPass) We’re sending postcards to voters who live in the districts of the Sedition Caucus members, starting with the seven Californians - House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy and Congressmen Mike Garcia, Doug LaMalfa, Jay Obernolte, Devin Nunes, Ken Calvert, and Darrell Issa. These men betrayed their oath to defend the U.S. Constitution against enemies foreign and domestic. Voters in these districts need to know how extreme their representatives have become. https://www.mobilize.us/flipthewest/event/370202/ President Biden’s Executive Actions https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/ BUT OTHER THAN THAT...A LITANY OF TRUMP SINS http://passdems.org/2021/02/but-other-than-that/ Don't forget to pay your 2021 Membership Dues Please pay your dues at www.passdems.org or mail check now to P.O. Box 724, Banning 92220 Democrats of the Desert are pleased to announce that Dr. th Raul Ruiz, 36 Congressional District, will join their virtual meeting this Saturday, February 27. They are inviting all Democrats in this region to join them. Register here: https://myemail.constantcontact.com/OnZoom-Meeting-this -Saturday.html?soid=1103123348260&aid=5EjDH6DlfM8 America’s Next Authoritarian Will Be Much More Competent Trump was ineffective and easily beaten. A future strongman won’t be. NOVEMBER 7, 2020, Zeynep Tufekci Now that Joe Biden has won the presidency, we can expect debates over whether Donald Trump was an aber- ration (“not who we are!”) or another instantiation of America’s pathologies and sins.
    [Show full text]
  • From Protest to Reform a Study of Social Movements’ Success Contents
    From protest to reform A study of social movements’ success Contents Introduction 4 About this report 7 At a glance: selected features of social movements 8 Setting the context: what triggers 9 protest movements? Armenia’s Velvet Revolution (2018) 9 Pro-impeachment protests in Brazil (2015-2016) 10 The October Revolution in Lebanon (2019) 11 End SARS protests in Nigeria (2020) 12 There’s no success like failure: 13 debunking spontaneity The risks and pitfalls of leaderlessness 17 and over-reliance on strong leadership Measuring success and failure 24 Conclusions 30 2 Foreword From the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia to military coup in Myanmar, undermining civil the Taksim protests in Turkey and the Maidan disobedience and nonviolent resistance. protests in Ukraine, social upheavals can gain strength seemingly suddenly, often around Sometimes, the threat to a protest movement’s a single event, and then go on to challenge success comes from within. When movement deeply entrenched power structures. leadership is weak, or overly rigid and centralised, movements have a hard time What makes these protests so powerful is realising their goals. Equally, when movement activists’ and movement members’ willingness structures are not built for the long haul, it to risk life and liberty in their urgent desire to becomes hard to build and sustain momentum work against— against an oppressive regime, for lasting political change. discriminatory legislation, or a systemic lack of justice. But after these early chaotic moments, Importantly, even when protests “succeed”, disruptive movements too often fade away long-term reforms are not a given. Activists can without creating the long-term changes that lack a long-term vision for change which goes they sought.
    [Show full text]
  • Algorithmic Harms Beyond Facebook and Google: Emergent Challenges of Computational Agency
    TUFEKCI FINAL.DOCX (DO NOT DELETE) 6/4/15 6:52 PM ALGORITHMIC HARMS BEYOND FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE: EMERGENT CHALLENGES OF COMPUTATIONAL AGENCY ZEYNEP TUFEKCI* INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 203 I. GATEKEEPER ALGORITHMS: THE CASE FOR CONCERN AND CHALLENGES ................................................................................................. 206 A. Algorithmic Harms: Lack of Visibility, Information Asymmetry, and Hidden Influence ............................................ 207 B. When “Big Data” Reveals More Than Was Disclosed: Computational Violations of Privacy ....................................... 209 II. ALGORITHMIC HARMS THROUGH COMPUTATIONAL AGENCY: TWO CASE STUDIES ............................................................................................... 213 A. Algorithmic Harms: Social Movements and the Civic Sphere ................................................................................................... 213 B. Elections And Algorithmic Harms ................................................. 215 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 216 INTRODUCTION In June of 2014, experiments performed on Facebook users without their knowledge—a previously little-known topic—became big news, garnering enormous coverage nationally and internation- ally. The furor was sparked by a study published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy
    [Show full text]
  • The Path of Greatest Resistance
    The Path of Greatest Resistance New York Review of Books, David Cole, Feb. 7, 2019 Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci How Change Happens: Why Some Social Movements Succeed While Others Don’t by Leslie R. Crutchfield In the two years since the 2016 election, Donald Trump has generated some of the most demagogic, xenophobic, and cruel policies and practices to come out of Washington in decades. At the same time we have also seen some of the most engaged social activism in decades. The Women’s March, the airport demonstrations against the Muslim ban, the overflowing town halls in defense of the Affordable Care Act, the protests against the separation of immigrant families and Trump’s threats to deport undocumented minors who were granted legal status by the Obama administration, the #MeToo moment-turned-movement, the student-led March for Our Lives in support of stricter gun control, and the widespread protests against Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court are just the most public manifestations of citizens’ determination to stand up against Trump’s assaults on civil rights, civil liberties, and constitutional norms. Less obvious signs of this engagement include the record number of subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post, which are important checks on an administration that cavalierly disregards truth, and the quadrupling of membership in the American Civil Liberties Union, of which I am legal director. We were already the largest civil liberties and civil rights organization in the country before Trump’s election, and our membership has risen from 400,000 to 1.8 million since November 2016.
    [Show full text]
  • POVERTY NARRATIVES in Popular Culture
    May 2021 POVERTY NARRATIVES in popular culture Final Report By Erica L. Rosenthal, Ph.D., Adam Amel Rogers, M.C.M., Shawn Van Valkenburgh, Ph.D., Emily Peterson, Ph.D., & Dana Weinstein, M.A. Supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Report design by Veronica Jauriqui TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 03 The Power of Pop Culture How do Media Narratives Affect Our Views of Poverty? RESEARCH OVERVIEW Audience Survey 06 Poverty on All U.S. Television Poverty in Scripted Entertainment Stereotypes of Poverty in Sitcoms Poverty and Wealth in Music Lyrics KEY FINDINGS 10 Audience Survey Segments Media Genres Box: Poverty and Wealth Lyrics Excerpts Deep Dive into Scripted Entertainment Key Topics CONCLUSION 24 Insights and Recommendations for Storytellers Future Research 2 Poverty Narratives in Pop Culture INTRODUCTION Wealth inequality in the U.S. has increased tremendously over the past fifty years (Piketty & Saez, 2013), but the proportion of Americans who self-identify as lower- or working-class has remained relatively unchanged over the same time period (GSS, 2021). Research shows that low-income Americans are often reluctant to think of themselves as poor or working class (Williams, 2009). This may, in part, be a result of social stigma painting poor people as cold and incompetent (Fiske et al., 2002), as well as lazy, entitled, and drug-addicted (GOOD, 2019). Further, Americans tend to attribute poverty to individual characteristics and behavior, such as lack of personal responsibility or work ethic (GOOD). Middle Class Educated Blue Collar Poor Rich Homeless Figure 1 : (Left) Perceptions of Social Groups (Fiske et al., 2002); (Right) Words Associated with Poverty (GOOD, 2019) These stereotypes discourage empathy for people living in poverty (Bullock, 2008; Fiske et al., 2002) and hinder support for policies that could promote economic mobility (Williams, 2009).
    [Show full text]
  • How Social Media Took Us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump
    How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump technologyreview.com/s/611806/how-social-media-took-us-from-tahrir-square-to-donald-trump by Zeynep Tufekci 1. The euphoria of discovery 1/9 This story is part of our September/October 2018 issue As the Arab Spring convulsed the Middle East in 2011 and authoritarian leaders toppled one after another, I traveled the region to try to understand the role that technology was playing. I chatted with protesters in cafés near Tahrir Square in Cairo, and many asserted that as long as they had the internet and the smartphone, they would prevail. In Tunisia, emboldened activists showed me how they had used open-source tools to track the shopping trips to Paris that their autocratic president’s wife had taken on government planes. Even Syrians I met in Beirut were still optimistic; their country had not yet descended into a hellish war. The young people had energy, smarts, humor, and smartphones, and we expected that the region’s fate would turn in favor of their democratic demands. Back in the United States, at a conference talk in 2012, I used a screenshot from a viral video recorded during the Iranian street protests of 2009 to illustrate how the new technologies were making it harder for traditional information gatekeepers—like governments and the media—to stifle or control dissident speech. It was a difficult image to see: a young woman lay bleeding to death on the sidewalk. But therein resided its power. Just a decade earlier, it would most likely never have been taken (who carried video cameras all the time?), let alone gone viral (how, unless you owned a TV station or a newspaper?).
    [Show full text]
  • Big Data, Surveillance and Computational Politics by Zeynep
    ENGINEERING THE PUBLIC: BIG DATA, SURVEILLANCE AND COMPUTATIONAL POLITICS 1 DRAFT UNDER REVIEW DRAFT Engineering the Public: Big Data, Surveillance and Computational Politics By Zeynep Tufekci Abstract: Digital technologies have given rise to a new combination of big data and computational practices which allow for massive, latent data collection and sophisticated computational modeling, increasing the capacity of those with resources and access to use these tools to carry out highly effective, opaque and unaccountable campaigns of persuasion and social engineering in political, civic and commercial spheres. I examine six intertwined dynamics that pertain to the rise of computational politics: the rise of big data, the shift away from demographics to individualized targeting, the opacity and power of computational modeling, the use of persuasive behavioral science, digital media enabling dynamic real-time experimentation, and the growth of new power brokers who own the data or social media environments. I then examine the consequences of these new mechanisms on the public sphere and political campaigns. Keywords: Big Data; Surveillance; Political Campaigns; Persuasive Communication; Privacy ENGINEERING THE PUBLIC: BIG DATA, SURVEILLANCE AND COMPUTATIONAL POLITICS 2 Engineering the Public: Big Data, Surveillance and Computational Politics The emergence of interactive, networked technologies which shape the current Internet instilled hopes among some observers that this emergent interactivity in the public sphere could help limit or even cure some of the ailments of late modern democracies. In contrast to broadcast technologies, the Internet offers expansive possibilities for horizontal communication among citizens, while drastically lowering the costs of organizing and access to information. It was hoped that these affordances would open new avenues for citizen participation in civic life.
    [Show full text]