Pub Date : 2022-04-29DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065211
Moa Eriksson Krutrök, Mathilda Åkerlund
ABSTRACT In this paper, we explore how highly visible users in the context of #BlackLivesMatter on TikTok shape the narrative around Black victims of police brutality, the understanding of these narratives by others, and the potential consequences of these portrayals for the movement at large. To examine these dimensions, we analysed the 100 most circulated TikTok videos and associated comments depicting victims of police brutality using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag through multimodal critical discourse analysis. We identified how users attempted to increase visibility of their content, and how this was supported or criticised by commenters depending on the perceived motives of these efforts. Furthermore, we showcased how influencers raised awareness of the movement with little personal effort or risk, sometimes appearing to leverage the movement for self-exposure. Our analysis showed that many of the most liked videos were made by white content creators who, in their videos, seemed to be addressing an imagined white audience. While these efforts portrayed the movement favourably, the content creators remain outsiders who have not themselves been in harm's way of police brutality. While there were exceptions that promoted the perspectives of marginalised communities, and while the white narratives were consistently supportive of the movement, they also work to displace focus on racial (in)justice away from those directly affected by it, that is, away from Black people’s own experiences of police brutality. We discuss these findings in relation to questions about digital representations of Black victimhood, digital visibility and practices of whiteness, on TikTok and beyond.
{"title":"Through a white lens: Black victimhood, visibility, and whiteness in the Black Lives Matter movement on TikTok","authors":"Moa Eriksson Krutrök, Mathilda Åkerlund","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065211","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065211","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In this paper, we explore how highly visible users in the context of #BlackLivesMatter on TikTok shape the narrative around Black victims of police brutality, the understanding of these narratives by others, and the potential consequences of these portrayals for the movement at large. To examine these dimensions, we analysed the 100 most circulated TikTok videos and associated comments depicting victims of police brutality using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag through multimodal critical discourse analysis. We identified how users attempted to increase visibility of their content, and how this was supported or criticised by commenters depending on the perceived motives of these efforts. Furthermore, we showcased how influencers raised awareness of the movement with little personal effort or risk, sometimes appearing to leverage the movement for self-exposure. Our analysis showed that many of the most liked videos were made by white content creators who, in their videos, seemed to be addressing an imagined white audience. While these efforts portrayed the movement favourably, the content creators remain outsiders who have not themselves been in harm's way of police brutality. While there were exceptions that promoted the perspectives of marginalised communities, and while the white narratives were consistently supportive of the movement, they also work to displace focus on racial (in)justice away from those directly affected by it, that is, away from Black people’s own experiences of police brutality. We discuss these findings in relation to questions about digital representations of Black victimhood, digital visibility and practices of whiteness, on TikTok and beyond.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"1996 - 2014"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42033464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-26DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2056712
Amber Marshall, K. Turner, Carol Richards, M. Foth, M. Dezuanni
ABSTRACT As global agricultural production methods and supply chains have become more digitised, farmers around the world are adopting digital agricultural technologies (AgTech) such as drones, IoT, remote sensors, blockchain and satellite imagery to inform on-farm decision-making. Yet, on the backdrop of a persistent digital divide between rural and urban communities, many Australian farmers are not taking up digital AgTech. It has been argued that these farmers are being ‘left behind’ in an increasingly digital world, and this may impact their future success. Scholars of digital AgTech adoption typically take a siloed approach, positioning the individual or farm as the key unit of analysis, with fewer studies addressing structural conditions. This has provided a useful but incomplete understanding of the disparity between users and non-users. This paper builds upon emerging sociocultural approaches, which aim to address this gap, by using a novel ‘communitive ecology’ analytical approach to consider how adoption occurs through networks of actors. Based on an exploratory, qualitative study of a digital farming project on a cotton farm and its digital communicative ecology in South-East Queensland, Australia this study identifies technological, discursive, and social factors of digital AgTech adoption. Overall, an evolution from a digital divide to data divide, expressed in the interactions between farmers and stakeholders, and characterised by gaps between the generation and application of farm data, is observed.
{"title":"Critical factors of digital AgTech adoption on Australian farms: from digital to data divide","authors":"Amber Marshall, K. Turner, Carol Richards, M. Foth, M. Dezuanni","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2056712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2056712","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT As global agricultural production methods and supply chains have become more digitised, farmers around the world are adopting digital agricultural technologies (AgTech) such as drones, IoT, remote sensors, blockchain and satellite imagery to inform on-farm decision-making. Yet, on the backdrop of a persistent digital divide between rural and urban communities, many Australian farmers are not taking up digital AgTech. It has been argued that these farmers are being ‘left behind’ in an increasingly digital world, and this may impact their future success. Scholars of digital AgTech adoption typically take a siloed approach, positioning the individual or farm as the key unit of analysis, with fewer studies addressing structural conditions. This has provided a useful but incomplete understanding of the disparity between users and non-users. This paper builds upon emerging sociocultural approaches, which aim to address this gap, by using a novel ‘communitive ecology’ analytical approach to consider how adoption occurs through networks of actors. Based on an exploratory, qualitative study of a digital farming project on a cotton farm and its digital communicative ecology in South-East Queensland, Australia this study identifies technological, discursive, and social factors of digital AgTech adoption. Overall, an evolution from a digital divide to data divide, expressed in the interactions between farmers and stakeholders, and characterised by gaps between the generation and application of farm data, is observed.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":"868 - 886"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44535945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-26DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2063063
Aphra Kerr, A. Iliadis
ABSTRACT This paper introduces the ‘Independence’ themed special issue which includes research presented at the 22nd annual Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference (2021). ‘Independence’ as a special issue theme could hardly be timelier, both in geopolitical and internet research terms. The call for the 2021 AoIR annual conference asked us to reflect on the ambivalence of the term, to look back on historical struggles for independence, the long waves of history, and prompted us to ask who benefits from independence (and who does not). Hosted online for a second year, this time by universities in Philadelphia (USA), the conference was bounded by the Black Lives Matter movement, the insurrectionist storming of Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill, and global struggles to control the COVID-19 pandemic. This special issue includes nine papers that showcase new research exploring the affordances offered by digital media platforms to people, users, and workers, while also identifying tendencies towards new forms of control and surveillance facilitated by platforms. Topics include geopolitical and biopolitical digital sovereignty, facial recognition technologies, data divides, new methods approaches and innovative data sourcing, mobile and social media, examinations of embodied local knowledge as well as patriarchal, racist, and gendered social structures, and a broad range of field sites from Asia, Africa, and South America.
{"title":"Independence: an introduction to the #AoIR2021 special issue","authors":"Aphra Kerr, A. Iliadis","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2063063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2063063","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This paper introduces the ‘Independence’ themed special issue which includes research presented at the 22nd annual Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference (2021). ‘Independence’ as a special issue theme could hardly be timelier, both in geopolitical and internet research terms. The call for the 2021 AoIR annual conference asked us to reflect on the ambivalence of the term, to look back on historical struggles for independence, the long waves of history, and prompted us to ask who benefits from independence (and who does not). Hosted online for a second year, this time by universities in Philadelphia (USA), the conference was bounded by the Black Lives Matter movement, the insurrectionist storming of Washington, D.C.’s Capitol Hill, and global struggles to control the COVID-19 pandemic. This special issue includes nine papers that showcase new research exploring the affordances offered by digital media platforms to people, users, and workers, while also identifying tendencies towards new forms of control and surveillance facilitated by platforms. Topics include geopolitical and biopolitical digital sovereignty, facial recognition technologies, data divides, new methods approaches and innovative data sourcing, mobile and social media, examinations of embodied local knowledge as well as patriarchal, racist, and gendered social structures, and a broad range of field sites from Asia, Africa, and South America.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":"727 - 733"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47881845","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-25DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2069507
Raluca David, Toby Phillips
ABSTRACT The past decades have seen efforts to increase digital inclusion for women worldwide, with the ultimate aim to advance gender equality. However, progress is slow, despite important advances in moving beyond a focus on ‘digital access’ (as measured by network coverage and hardware) towards a more holistic understanding of inclusion that considers abilities, awareness and agency. Here, we propose a further theoretical shift that draws on social system theories (e.g., Luhmann, 1984) and on the theory of ‘intersecting inequalities’ (Kabeer, 2010). We propose to understand the gender digital gap, particularly in mobile and internet usage, not merely descriptively but dynamically – since even factors like agency and awareness change over time – by applying concepts of feedback loops, low-equilibrium traps, multi-dimensional exclusion and systems analysis. This paper highlights how women may become locked in a state of low-inclusion unless the feedback loops between digital, social, economic and political exclusion are addressed through policies that tackle multiple dimensions. The paper reviews research on gender digital gaps with particular focus on developing countries, and with direct implications for policy-making.
{"title":"The gender digital gap: shifting the theoretical focus to systems analysis and feedback loops","authors":"Raluca David, Toby Phillips","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2069507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2069507","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The past decades have seen efforts to increase digital inclusion for women worldwide, with the ultimate aim to advance gender equality. However, progress is slow, despite important advances in moving beyond a focus on ‘digital access’ (as measured by network coverage and hardware) towards a more holistic understanding of inclusion that considers abilities, awareness and agency. Here, we propose a further theoretical shift that draws on social system theories (e.g., Luhmann, 1984) and on the theory of ‘intersecting inequalities’ (Kabeer, 2010). We propose to understand the gender digital gap, particularly in mobile and internet usage, not merely descriptively but dynamically – since even factors like agency and awareness change over time – by applying concepts of feedback loops, low-equilibrium traps, multi-dimensional exclusion and systems analysis. This paper highlights how women may become locked in a state of low-inclusion unless the feedback loops between digital, social, economic and political exclusion are addressed through policies that tackle multiple dimensions. The paper reviews research on gender digital gaps with particular focus on developing countries, and with direct implications for policy-making.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2071 - 2087"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45545163","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-21DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065214
Annabel Ngien, B. Hogan
ABSTRACT During COVID-19, there has been an unprecedented rise of videoconferencing use, primarily through Zoom. This increasingly popularity of Zoom has led to growing debates about its negative health impacts. In particular, ‘Zoom fatigue’ is a rapidly popularizing phenomena that describes the mental exhaustion or burnout arising from Zoom use. However, the specific mechanisms through which Zoom leads to Zoom fatigue are not well understood. To fill this gap, this study tested a mediated model linking Zoom use with the camera on (‘ZUC’) to Zoom fatigue, through the mediator of social interaction anxiety on Zoom, with a survey sample from the United Kingdom. It was also posited that self-monitoring positively moderated the effects of ZUC on social interaction anxiety on Zoom. The results demonstrated that the direct effects of ZUC on Zoom fatigue was significant and positive. The paper also showed that social interaction anxiety on Zoom increased Zoom fatigue. However, ZUC failed to indirectly increase Zoom fatigue due to the insignificant effects of ZUC on social interaction anxiety on Zoom. Self-monitoring also did not moderate the insignificant relationship between ZUC and social interaction anxiety on Zoom. These insights can guide conceptual frameworks for future research exploring the social psychological impacts of digital media on health.
{"title":"The relationship between Zoom use with the camera on and Zoom fatigue: considering self-monitoring and social interaction anxiety","authors":"Annabel Ngien, B. Hogan","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065214","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065214","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT During COVID-19, there has been an unprecedented rise of videoconferencing use, primarily through Zoom. This increasingly popularity of Zoom has led to growing debates about its negative health impacts. In particular, ‘Zoom fatigue’ is a rapidly popularizing phenomena that describes the mental exhaustion or burnout arising from Zoom use. However, the specific mechanisms through which Zoom leads to Zoom fatigue are not well understood. To fill this gap, this study tested a mediated model linking Zoom use with the camera on (‘ZUC’) to Zoom fatigue, through the mediator of social interaction anxiety on Zoom, with a survey sample from the United Kingdom. It was also posited that self-monitoring positively moderated the effects of ZUC on social interaction anxiety on Zoom. The results demonstrated that the direct effects of ZUC on Zoom fatigue was significant and positive. The paper also showed that social interaction anxiety on Zoom increased Zoom fatigue. However, ZUC failed to indirectly increase Zoom fatigue due to the insignificant effects of ZUC on social interaction anxiety on Zoom. Self-monitoring also did not moderate the insignificant relationship between ZUC and social interaction anxiety on Zoom. These insights can guide conceptual frameworks for future research exploring the social psychological impacts of digital media on health.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2052 - 2070"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47142682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-21DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2062253
Konstantinos Kerasovitis
monopolized and skewed infrastructures of control. Supplementing the depth of these situated case studies is the book’s menagerie of interconnections. Theoretically, Kumar draws from a poststructuralist tradition situated between Deleuze and Foucault, contemporary internet studies scholarship, and a postcolonial canon including Said, Spivak and Bhabha, weaving these together seamlessly. Contemporary scholarship that is critical of the possibility of a truly equal internet, however, is the one underexplored terrain of the book. One of the implicit assumptions gestured to in the conclusion is that, all critiques aside, the world benefits from a universal network such as the internet. Kumar argues against internet balkanization, suggesting that ‘the way forward is to more fully embrace the global plurality rather than erase it through making participation mandatory on conditions that are cultural, social and political’ (p. 211). The book would benefit from a more thorough engagement with this idea of a balkanized internet, even if it were to come to the same conclusion. Without this perspective, a certain cyberoptimism, one that endorses ‘visions of a plural, more globally representative web’ (p. 211) feels like too easy a solution. For the interested reader, the best use of this book is to use it as a thorough and intricately woven postcolonial critique of disparate yet ultimately Americanist strands of internet studies scholarship. Kumar’s deft and creative linkages carve out a space for postcolonial critique in the field of internet studies, introducing a productive faultline that future scholars of the digitalscape must contend with.
{"title":"The triumph of profiling: the self in digital culture","authors":"Konstantinos Kerasovitis","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2062253","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2062253","url":null,"abstract":"monopolized and skewed infrastructures of control. Supplementing the depth of these situated case studies is the book’s menagerie of interconnections. Theoretically, Kumar draws from a poststructuralist tradition situated between Deleuze and Foucault, contemporary internet studies scholarship, and a postcolonial canon including Said, Spivak and Bhabha, weaving these together seamlessly. Contemporary scholarship that is critical of the possibility of a truly equal internet, however, is the one underexplored terrain of the book. One of the implicit assumptions gestured to in the conclusion is that, all critiques aside, the world benefits from a universal network such as the internet. Kumar argues against internet balkanization, suggesting that ‘the way forward is to more fully embrace the global plurality rather than erase it through making participation mandatory on conditions that are cultural, social and political’ (p. 211). The book would benefit from a more thorough engagement with this idea of a balkanized internet, even if it were to come to the same conclusion. Without this perspective, a certain cyberoptimism, one that endorses ‘visions of a plural, more globally representative web’ (p. 211) feels like too easy a solution. For the interested reader, the best use of this book is to use it as a thorough and intricately woven postcolonial critique of disparate yet ultimately Americanist strands of internet studies scholarship. Kumar’s deft and creative linkages carve out a space for postcolonial critique in the field of internet studies, introducing a productive faultline that future scholars of the digitalscape must contend with.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"1694 - 1697"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46020922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-21DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2064226
Zhe Liu
{"title":"The evolution of the Chinese internet: creative visibility in the digital public","authors":"Zhe Liu","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2064226","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2064226","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"1911 - 1913"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47648686","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-21DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065212
Y. Lee
ABSTRACT With recent research emphasizing different leadership roles that characterize networked social movements, brokerage has received renewed attention as one of the key responsibilities of networked movement leadership. However, in limiting the role of brokering to creating horizontal connections among decentralized actors, previous research is missing an account of grassroots movements that were able to make vertical connections with the power structures and grow to have a significant political impact. By comparing two cases of feminist networked social movements from South Korea, I examine brokerage and conditions that enabled brokerage through the lens of leadership. I argue that brokerage is a crucial dimension of movement leadership and propose the concept of meso-level leadership to elaborate how some grassroots leaders could facilitate grassroots representation in mainstream legislative agenda-setting by forming relationships with actors across a broad organizational and institutional spectrum.
{"title":"Meso-level leaders as brokers of horizontal and vertical linkages in feminist networked social movements","authors":"Y. Lee","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065212","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065212","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT With recent research emphasizing different leadership roles that characterize networked social movements, brokerage has received renewed attention as one of the key responsibilities of networked movement leadership. However, in limiting the role of brokering to creating horizontal connections among decentralized actors, previous research is missing an account of grassroots movements that were able to make vertical connections with the power structures and grow to have a significant political impact. By comparing two cases of feminist networked social movements from South Korea, I examine brokerage and conditions that enabled brokerage through the lens of leadership. I argue that brokerage is a crucial dimension of movement leadership and propose the concept of meso-level leadership to elaborate how some grassroots leaders could facilitate grassroots representation in mainstream legislative agenda-setting by forming relationships with actors across a broad organizational and institutional spectrum.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"2015 - 2032"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47149885","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-13DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2056500
M. Lu, J. Qiu
ABSTRACT Through document analysis and interviews, this paper examines the patent narratives of Transsion, a Chinese company dominating Africa’s smartphone market and a leading innovator in facial recognition technologies (FRTs) optimized for darker skin tones. We identify two major narratives concerning Transsion’s FRT patenting practice. First is ‘empowerment’, through which Transsion argues that there are ‘blind spots’ in conventional AI technologies and presents its AI camera as a remedy and an empowerment tool for dark-skinned users by ‘seeing’ their beauty. Second is the ‘warfare’ narrative, which is shaped by the heightening market competition and accelerating patent races among Chinese phone makers. As the battle for tech supremacy intensifies in Africa, Transsion expresses a strong sense of crisis and considers its FRT patents as ‘weapons of competition’ in preparation for a future smartphone warfare in Africa. This study makes two contributions. Empirically, through analyzing patents, we examine a relatively less-known Chinese tech company that has tremendous impact in the Global South. Theoretically, we interrogate the possibility of algorithmic empowerment against racist AI and technological independence through patents, although developing AI as weaponry, in the China-Africa context, also hampers the politics of decolonization.
{"title":"Empowerment or warfare? dark skin, AI camera, and Transsion’s patent narratives","authors":"M. Lu, J. Qiu","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2056500","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2056500","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Through document analysis and interviews, this paper examines the patent narratives of Transsion, a Chinese company dominating Africa’s smartphone market and a leading innovator in facial recognition technologies (FRTs) optimized for darker skin tones. We identify two major narratives concerning Transsion’s FRT patenting practice. First is ‘empowerment’, through which Transsion argues that there are ‘blind spots’ in conventional AI technologies and presents its AI camera as a remedy and an empowerment tool for dark-skinned users by ‘seeing’ their beauty. Second is the ‘warfare’ narrative, which is shaped by the heightening market competition and accelerating patent races among Chinese phone makers. As the battle for tech supremacy intensifies in Africa, Transsion expresses a strong sense of crisis and considers its FRT patents as ‘weapons of competition’ in preparation for a future smartphone warfare in Africa. This study makes two contributions. Empirically, through analyzing patents, we examine a relatively less-known Chinese tech company that has tremendous impact in the Global South. Theoretically, we interrogate the possibility of algorithmic empowerment against racist AI and technological independence through patents, although developing AI as weaponry, in the China-Africa context, also hampers the politics of decolonization.","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"25 1","pages":"768 - 784"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42133960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-13DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2062254
V. Obia
{"title":"The costs of connection: how data is colonizing human life and appropriating it for capitalism","authors":"V. Obia","doi":"10.1080/1369118X.2022.2062254","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2062254","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48335,"journal":{"name":"Information Communication & Society","volume":"26 1","pages":"1908 - 1910"},"PeriodicalIF":4.2,"publicationDate":"2022-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43025722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：