s; Sara Schoonmaker, Brenda Sullivan, Nina Sossen, Jan Perrini, Nancy Levoie, Cynthia Cole, Rebec... more s; Sara Schoonmaker, Brenda Sullivan, Nina Sossen, Jan Perrini, Nancy Levoie, Cynthia Cole, Rebecca Han, and Jackie Orr who transcribed the interviews; Mark Berg, Debbie Way, Katy Ryan, Jackie Lafuente, Thy Ton, and Tim Cartwright who checked and corrected the transcripts; Tim Mulligan, Paula Philbrook, and Reagan Feeney who helped in the coding of the transcripts; and Helen Snively who painstakingly proof read the final draft. We would also like to thank Virginia Richardson, Irene Miceli, Donna Socha, and Carol Grimm, the administrative assistants of the Social Welfare Research Institute, on whom we relied so heavily each day. We are also grateful to Aage Sorensen, Alice Mellian, and the Department of Sociology at Harvard University for graciously providing a physical and intellectual environment conducive to writing this report. Finally, we would like to extend our warm gratitude to Thomas Murphy and the T. B. Murphy Foundation Charitable Trust not only for generously supporting o...
Four conservative paradigms have dominated social research in the United States on mass media and... more Four conservative paradigms have dominated social research in the United States on mass media and information technologies. Developmentalism, a view that links urbanization, media growth and social progress, has shaped the study of international communications (Lerner, 1958; Pool, 1971; Schramm, 1964). Pluralism, a perspective that views state-media relations as the product of political bargaining among interest groups that represent all segments of society, has led research on the politics of electronic communications (Deutsch, 1966; Krasnow and Longley, 1973). The influence of information technologies on the shape of the economy, on profits, productivity and industrial relations is guided by post-industrialism. It focuses on how this increases the power of information professionals and generally liberates workers from the drudgery of traditional industrial labor (Porat, 1976; Bell, 1973, 1977, 1979). Finally, a mass society perspective guides most research on the media and the private sphere of leisure. The diffusion of mass culture provides a pay-off for whatever subjugation the individual must endure in the workplace; but a mass society of atomized individuals is its unfortunate and unanticipated consequence (de Fleur and Ball-Rokeach, 1975)· These paradigms have proven useful in directing attention to the growing impact of electronic media on economic, political, and social life. Challenges to these dominant perspectives have been slow to develop primarily because the focus of debate in critical theory has been on the cultural realm (Robins and Webster, 1979). In this article we summarise recent developments in radical social theory which offer trenchant critiques of these positions. Developmentalism has been challenged by a renewed analysis of capitalist control of information as a system of global domination; pluralism by efforts to re-think the role of the state; post-industrialism by a critical attention to contemporary labor processes; the mass society thesis by alternative hypotheses on the nature of the private sphere and of consumption. In presenting these alternative theoretical perspectives we also indicate how they may be used to inform critical empirical research, and to work against the dominant traditions.
Global events like a pandemic or climate change are massive in scope but experienced at the local... more Global events like a pandemic or climate change are massive in scope but experienced at the local, lived, microscopic level. What sorts of methodologies and mindsets can help critical internet researchers, functioning as interventionists or activists, find traction by oscillating between these levels? How can we push (further) against the boundaries of research methods to build stronger coalitions and more impactful outcomes for social change among groups of scholars/researchers? This panel presents four papers addressing these questions based on a large scale online autoethnography in 2020. This “Massive/Micro” project simultaneously used and studied the angst and novelty of isolation during a pandemic, activating researchers, activists, and artists to explore the massive yet microscopic properties of COVID-19 as a “glocal” phenomenon. The challenge? Working independently and microscopically through intense focus on the Self but also working with distributed, largely unknown collab...
This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Bi... more This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Big Data Research.” Building on a variety of theoretical paradigms (i.e., critical theory, [new] materialism, feminist ethics, theory of cultural techniques) and frameworks (i.e., contextual integrity, deflationary perspective, ethics of care), the Special Issue contributes specific cases and fine-grained conceptual distinctions to ongoing discussions about the ethics in data-driven research. In the second decade of the 21st century, a grand narrative is emerging that posits knowledge derived from data analytics as true, because of the objective qualities of data, their means of collection and analysis, and the sheer size of the data set. The by-product of this grand narrative is that the qualitative aspects of behavior and experience that form the data are diminished, and the human is removed from the process of analysis. This situates data science as a process of analysis performed by th...
These materials are made available for use in research, teaching and private study, pursuant to U... more These materials are made available for use in research, teaching and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright Law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source. The publisher or original authors may retain copyright to the materials. Towards a general theory of the philanthropic activities of the wealthy
598 DEPAUL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 50:597 oped in analog environments, we have found this thesis perhaps... more 598 DEPAUL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 50:597 oped in analog environments, we have found this thesis perhaps even more pertinent in digital contexts. In The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties,2 Rosemary Coombe explored mass commercial culture and popular cultural ...
In recent years, we have witnessed several situations that raise new and old questions about ethi... more In recent years, we have witnessed several situations that raise new and old questions about ethics. Just as we wrap up this Special Issue, in fact, our news feeds unveil details of the latest case, where Cambridge Analytica, a large data mining and analysis firm, was able to access personal details of 50 million Facebook users without their direct permission or knowledge. This case is just the latest in a long list that illuminate the complications of ethics in social media practices (i.e., wide scale public shaming), data management (i.e., deliberate or accidental releases of private information), data slippage (i.e., moving from one context to another), technology design (i.e., search engine bias), and multiple other areas relevant for (social) life today. The locus of responsibility and accountability for ethical design, behavior, and outcomes is difficult to ascertain. Every social media situation involves multiple moments, decisions, actions, and operations that can result in outcomes that have potential harm for people. A complex ecology of simultaneously functioning systems and entities with a variety of interests, power, and self-awareness operates underneath the apparent seamlessness of our interfaces. The challenge of locating responsibility and accountability is exacerbated by the difficulty of determining with any clarity the relationship between action and consequence as well as between data and persons. This is not just a matter of finding the proverbial paper trail, as many of our ontological assumptions about the distinctions between data produced by people and people themselves are challenged. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the era of "big data" is the abstraction and disarticulation of data about individuals whose activity in digital spaces is the source of the data. In other words, through the symbolic alchemy of algorithmic computation, there is a transmogrification of the 784502S MSXXX10.
s; Sara Schoonmaker, Brenda Sullivan, Nina Sossen, Jan Perrini, Nancy Levoie, Cynthia Cole, Rebec... more s; Sara Schoonmaker, Brenda Sullivan, Nina Sossen, Jan Perrini, Nancy Levoie, Cynthia Cole, Rebecca Han, and Jackie Orr who transcribed the interviews; Mark Berg, Debbie Way, Katy Ryan, Jackie Lafuente, Thy Ton, and Tim Cartwright who checked and corrected the transcripts; Tim Mulligan, Paula Philbrook, and Reagan Feeney who helped in the coding of the transcripts; and Helen Snively who painstakingly proof read the final draft. We would also like to thank Virginia Richardson, Irene Miceli, Donna Socha, and Carol Grimm, the administrative assistants of the Social Welfare Research Institute, on whom we relied so heavily each day. We are also grateful to Aage Sorensen, Alice Mellian, and the Department of Sociology at Harvard University for graciously providing a physical and intellectual environment conducive to writing this report. Finally, we would like to extend our warm gratitude to Thomas Murphy and the T. B. Murphy Foundation Charitable Trust not only for generously supporting o...
Four conservative paradigms have dominated social research in the United States on mass media and... more Four conservative paradigms have dominated social research in the United States on mass media and information technologies. Developmentalism, a view that links urbanization, media growth and social progress, has shaped the study of international communications (Lerner, 1958; Pool, 1971; Schramm, 1964). Pluralism, a perspective that views state-media relations as the product of political bargaining among interest groups that represent all segments of society, has led research on the politics of electronic communications (Deutsch, 1966; Krasnow and Longley, 1973). The influence of information technologies on the shape of the economy, on profits, productivity and industrial relations is guided by post-industrialism. It focuses on how this increases the power of information professionals and generally liberates workers from the drudgery of traditional industrial labor (Porat, 1976; Bell, 1973, 1977, 1979). Finally, a mass society perspective guides most research on the media and the private sphere of leisure. The diffusion of mass culture provides a pay-off for whatever subjugation the individual must endure in the workplace; but a mass society of atomized individuals is its unfortunate and unanticipated consequence (de Fleur and Ball-Rokeach, 1975)· These paradigms have proven useful in directing attention to the growing impact of electronic media on economic, political, and social life. Challenges to these dominant perspectives have been slow to develop primarily because the focus of debate in critical theory has been on the cultural realm (Robins and Webster, 1979). In this article we summarise recent developments in radical social theory which offer trenchant critiques of these positions. Developmentalism has been challenged by a renewed analysis of capitalist control of information as a system of global domination; pluralism by efforts to re-think the role of the state; post-industrialism by a critical attention to contemporary labor processes; the mass society thesis by alternative hypotheses on the nature of the private sphere and of consumption. In presenting these alternative theoretical perspectives we also indicate how they may be used to inform critical empirical research, and to work against the dominant traditions.
Global events like a pandemic or climate change are massive in scope but experienced at the local... more Global events like a pandemic or climate change are massive in scope but experienced at the local, lived, microscopic level. What sorts of methodologies and mindsets can help critical internet researchers, functioning as interventionists or activists, find traction by oscillating between these levels? How can we push (further) against the boundaries of research methods to build stronger coalitions and more impactful outcomes for social change among groups of scholars/researchers? This panel presents four papers addressing these questions based on a large scale online autoethnography in 2020. This “Massive/Micro” project simultaneously used and studied the angst and novelty of isolation during a pandemic, activating researchers, activists, and artists to explore the massive yet microscopic properties of COVID-19 as a “glocal” phenomenon. The challenge? Working independently and microscopically through intense focus on the Self but also working with distributed, largely unknown collab...
This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Bi... more This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Big Data Research.” Building on a variety of theoretical paradigms (i.e., critical theory, [new] materialism, feminist ethics, theory of cultural techniques) and frameworks (i.e., contextual integrity, deflationary perspective, ethics of care), the Special Issue contributes specific cases and fine-grained conceptual distinctions to ongoing discussions about the ethics in data-driven research. In the second decade of the 21st century, a grand narrative is emerging that posits knowledge derived from data analytics as true, because of the objective qualities of data, their means of collection and analysis, and the sheer size of the data set. The by-product of this grand narrative is that the qualitative aspects of behavior and experience that form the data are diminished, and the human is removed from the process of analysis. This situates data science as a process of analysis performed by th...
These materials are made available for use in research, teaching and private study, pursuant to U... more These materials are made available for use in research, teaching and private study, pursuant to U.S. Copyright Law. The user must assume full responsibility for any use of the materials, including but not limited to, infringement of copyright and publication rights of reproduced materials. Any materials used for academic research or otherwise should be fully credited with the source. The publisher or original authors may retain copyright to the materials. Towards a general theory of the philanthropic activities of the wealthy
598 DEPAUL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 50:597 oped in analog environments, we have found this thesis perhaps... more 598 DEPAUL LAW REVIEW [Vol. 50:597 oped in analog environments, we have found this thesis perhaps even more pertinent in digital contexts. In The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties,2 Rosemary Coombe explored mass commercial culture and popular cultural ...
In recent years, we have witnessed several situations that raise new and old questions about ethi... more In recent years, we have witnessed several situations that raise new and old questions about ethics. Just as we wrap up this Special Issue, in fact, our news feeds unveil details of the latest case, where Cambridge Analytica, a large data mining and analysis firm, was able to access personal details of 50 million Facebook users without their direct permission or knowledge. This case is just the latest in a long list that illuminate the complications of ethics in social media practices (i.e., wide scale public shaming), data management (i.e., deliberate or accidental releases of private information), data slippage (i.e., moving from one context to another), technology design (i.e., search engine bias), and multiple other areas relevant for (social) life today. The locus of responsibility and accountability for ethical design, behavior, and outcomes is difficult to ascertain. Every social media situation involves multiple moments, decisions, actions, and operations that can result in outcomes that have potential harm for people. A complex ecology of simultaneously functioning systems and entities with a variety of interests, power, and self-awareness operates underneath the apparent seamlessness of our interfaces. The challenge of locating responsibility and accountability is exacerbated by the difficulty of determining with any clarity the relationship between action and consequence as well as between data and persons. This is not just a matter of finding the proverbial paper trail, as many of our ontological assumptions about the distinctions between data produced by people and people themselves are challenged. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of the era of "big data" is the abstraction and disarticulation of data about individuals whose activity in digital spaces is the source of the data. In other words, through the symbolic alchemy of algorithmic computation, there is a transmogrification of the 784502S MSXXX10.
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