"Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a soph
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isticated theory of the role internet plays, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded." (Back cover)
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"This resource is designed to support practitioners, decision makers, and development partners who work at the intersection of ICT and agriculture. In this revised e-Sourcebook you will find updated modules on ICT in the work of producer organizations; in research, extension and innovation; and in v
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alue chains and markets. The module on gender as a crosscutting theme has also been updated, and a new module on Big Data has been added. Our hope is that the updated ICT in Agriculture e-Sourcebook will continue to be a practical guide in understanding current trends, implementing appropriate interventions, and evaluating the impact of ICT interventions in agricultural programs. The publication marries cutting-edge expert knowledge in ICT with empirical knowledge on a wide range of agriculture topics, from governance to supply chain management. The original e-Sourcebook was an endeavor carried out by InfoDev and the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of the World Bank. The update of the ICT in Agriculture e-Sourcebook was led by the World Bank Group’s Food and Agriculture Global Practice, with significant contributions from external partners and experts." (Foreword)
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"The report has two main parts. In the first part, we explore the questions discussed in the previous paragraphs [on the internet of things] through a regional survey spanning the 22 Arab countries. In the second part we continue the tradition set in the previous editions of the Arab Social Media Re
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port series by exploring the growth and usage trends of influential social media platforms across the region, including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and, for the first time, Instagram. The findings highlight important changes—and some stagnation—in the ways social media is infiltrating demographic layers in Arab societies, be it gender, age and language." (Introduction, page 8)
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"In this report, developed with support from Facebook, we focus on an approach to extract public value from social media data that we believe holds the greatest potential: data collaboratives. Data collaboratives are an emerging form of public-private partnership in which actors from different secto
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rs exchange information to create new public value. Such collaborative arrangements, for example between social media companies and humanitarian organizations or civil society actors, can be seen as possible templates for leveraging privately held data towards the attainment of public goals. Existing research on data collaboratives is sparse, but a number of recent examples show how social media data can be leveraged for public good. These include Facebook’s sharing of population maps with humanitarian organizations following natural disasters; predicting adverse drug reactions through social media data analysis in Spain; and the city of Boston’s use of crowdsourced data from Waze to improve transportation planning. These examples and 9 additional cases are discussed in the full report. By assessing these examples, we identify five key value propositions behind the use of social media data for public goals: 1. Situational awareness and response; 2. Knowledge creation and transfer; 3. Public service design and delivery; 4. Prediction and forecasting; 5. Impact assessment and evaluation." (Pages 6-7)
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"In this report, we look at the state of digital data for development and emerging trends. We aim to support German development cooperation in integrating and prioritising data approaches and investments in their work. In this study we focus on four data categories: big data, open data, citizen-gene
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rated data and real-time data. The selection of these categories considered two key dimensions: (1) the growing use in development-related policy discussions, and (2) the ability to capture key characteristics of interest, including size, access, source, and timeliness of data. We believe these categories provide a good starting point to explore how digital data production and use might lead to better development outcomes." (Executive summary)
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"Hochfrequenzhandel, Google-Ranking, Filterbubble - nur drei aktuelle Beispiele der Wirkmacht von Algorithmen. Der Band versammelt Beiträge, die sich mit dem historischen Auftauchen und der mittlerweile allgegenwärtigen Verbreitung von Algorithmen in verschiedenen Bereichen des sozialen Lebens bes
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chäftigen. Sie nehmen die Wechselbeziehungen algorithmischer und nicht-algorithmischer Akteure und deren Bedeutungen für unseren Alltag und unsere Sozialbeziehungen in den Blick und gehen den Mechanismen nach, mit denen Algorithmen - selbst Produkte eines spezifischen Weltzugangs - die Wirklichkeit rahmen, während sie zugleich die Art und Weise organisieren, wie Menschen über Gesellschaft denken. Die Beiträge beinhalten Fallstudien zu Sozialen Medien, Werbung und Bewertung, aber auch zu mobilen Sicherheitsinfrastrukturen wie z.B. Drohnen." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Von algorithmischen Prozessen gesteuerte Intermediäre wie Google oder Facebook haben im Vergleich zu redaktionell gesteuerten Medien wie dem Fernsehen einen großen, aber bislang nicht entscheidenden Einfluss auf die öffentliche Meinungsbildung. Sie bewerten die Relevanz von Inhalten viel stärke
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r als redaktionelle Medien an unmittelbaren Reaktionen des Publikums. Die Nutzung der Intermediäre für öffentliche Meinungsbildung führt zu einem Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit. Zentral ist dabei ein zunehmend personalisiertes und maschinell kuratiertes Medienangebot, bei dem unmittelbare Nutzerreaktionen ein bedeutender Input sind. Eine Reihe psychologischer Faktoren führt aber dazu, dass die ausgewerteten vor allem impulsiven Publikumsreaktionen schlecht geeignet sind, um Relevanz im Sinne klassischer Leitwerte wie Wahrheit, Vielfalt oder gesellschaftliche Integration zu bewerten, die in Deutschland Grundlage der von redaktionellen Medien geschaffenen Öffentlichkeit sind. Im Zentrum der komplexen Wechselwirkungen digitaler Öffentlichkeit stehen algorithmische Prozesse, die Inhalte sortieren und deren Zusammenstellung personalisieren. Deshalb müssen Lösungen zuerst hier ansetzen." (Verlagsbeschreibung)
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"Some of the most remarkable impacts of digital media on political activism lie not in the new types of speech it provides to disorganized masses, but in the new types of listening it fosters among organized pressure groups. Beneath the easily visible waves of e-petitions, “likes,” hashtags, and
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viral videos lie a powerful undercurrent of activated public opinion. In this book, David Karpf offers a rich, detailed assessment of how political organizations carefully monitor this online activity and use it to develop new tactics and strategies that help them succeed in the evolving hybrid media system. Karpf discusses the power and potential of this new “analytic activism,” exploring the organizational logics and media logics that determine how digital inputs shape the choices that political campaigners make. He provides the first careful analysis of how organizations like Change.org and Upworthy.com influence the types of political narratives that dominate our Facebook newsfeeds and Twitter timelines. He investigates how MoveOn.org and its “netroots” peers use analytics to listen more effectively to their members and supporters. He also identifies two boundaries of analytic activism—the analytics floor and analytics frontier—which define the scope of this new style of organized citizen engagement. The book concludes by examining the limitations of analytic activism, raising a cautionary flag about the ways that putting too much faith in digital listening can lead to a weakening of civil society as a whole." (Publisher description)
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"Personalized recommendations in search engines, social media and also in more traditional media increasingly raise concerns over potentially negative consequences for diversity and the quality of public discourse. The algorithmic filtering and adaption of online content to personal preferences and
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interests is often associated with a decrease in the diversity of information to which users are exposed. Notwithstanding the question of whether these claims are correct or not, this article discusses whether and how recommendations can also be designed to stimulate more diverse exposure to information and to break potential ‘filter bubbles’ rather than create them. Combining insights from democratic theory, computer science and law, the article makes suggestions for design principles and explores the potential and possible limits of ‘diversity sensitive design’." (Abstract)
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"The overflow of information generated during disasters can be as paralyzing to humanitarian response as the lack of information. This flash flood of information'social media, satellite imagery and more is often referred to as Big Data. Making sense of this data deluge during disasters is proving an
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impossible challenge for traditional humanitarian." (Publisher description)
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"Internet companies have become the new gatekeepers of information–and their data-parsing algorithms the twenty-first century equivalent of the stereotypical editor with the green eyeshade who filtered the news before passing it along to readers .. As they have expanded globally, these pioneering
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corporations have had to face, and deal with, a tough reality. The Internet that gave them birth espouses all sorts of high-minded principles of open and free expression. But many of the governments in countries that offer tantalizingly large commercial markets not only don’t espouse those principles, they actively deny them [...] This report offers these recommendations for addressing the role of the new information gatekeepers in the age of the Internet: The dominant Internet companies should be more transparent about how they decide on content issues ...; The start-ups of today should consider the lessons of the recent past ...; Twitter (and the telecoms, and other ICT companies) should join the Global Network Initiative ...; The Global Network Initiative should toughen up." (Executive summary, page 6-7)
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