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Message Deletion on Telegram: Affected Data Types and Implications for Computational Analysis
Get PDFEphemeral digital trace data can decrease the completeness, reproducibility, and reliability of social media datasets. Systematic post deletions thus potentially bias the results of computational methods used to map actors, content, and online information diffusion. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the extent and distribution of message deletion across different data types using data from the hybrid messenger service Telegram, which has experienced an influx of deplatformed users from mainstream social media platforms. A repeatedly scraped sample of messages from public Telegram groups and channels was used to investigate the effect of message ephemerality on the consistency of Telegram datasets. The findings revealed that message deletion introduces biases to the computational collection and analysis of Telegram data. Further, message ephemerality reduces dataset consistency, the quality of social network analyses, and the results of computational content analysis methods, such as topic modeling or dictionaries. The implications of these findings for scholars aiming to use Telegram data for computational research, possible solutions, and contributions to the methodological advancement of studying online political communication are discussed further in this article
Digital Accountability: The Untapped Potential of Participation when Using Technology in Humanitarian Action
Get PDFOver the past decades, digital technologies have seen a massive increase in use and have profoundly shaped the humanitarian sector. Their exponential growth has greatly increased the amount of data to be managed and accelerated the speed with which information travels (ALNAP 2022; OCHA 2021). This growth triggered discussions around the efficiency of necessary humanitarian services to respond to rising needs and sector-wide funding cuts. The request for more evidence-based programming, improved coordination, and increased accountability pushed many humanitarian organisations to ‘go digital’. […]This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII121, 16DII122, 16DII123, 16DII124, 16DII125, 16DII126, 16DII127, 16DII128 – “Deutsches Internet-Institut”)
An empirical-legal study
Get PDFOnline platforms have emerged as a new kind of regulatory object. In this article, we empirically map the emergence of the field of platform regulation in one country: the United Kingdom (UK). We focus on the 18-month period between September 2018 and February 2020 when an upsurge of regulatory activism reflected increasing sensitivity to national sovereignty in the context of Brexit. Through an empirical–legal content analysis of eight official reports issued by the UK government, parliamentary committees, and regulatory agencies, we code the online harms to which regulation is being asked to respond; identify relevant subject domains of law (such as data protection and privacy, competition, education, media and broadcasting, consumer protection, tax law and financial regulation, intellectual property law, security law); and analyze the agencies referred in the reports for their centrality in the regulatory network and their regulatory powers. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of “field,” we observe the emergence of regulators with investigatory and enforcement powers that stand in mutually unstable power relations to each other as well as vis-à-vis shifting executive and legislative interventions. Online platforms appear to acquire authority to exercise state powers
From the fringes into mainstream politics. Intermediary networks and movement-party coordination of a global anti-immigration campaign in Germany
Get PDFMany liberal democracies have witnessed the rise of radical right parties and movements that threaten liberal values of tolerance and inclusion. Extremist movement factions may promote inflammatory ideas that engage broader publics, but party leaders face dilemmas of endorsing content from extremist origins. However, when that content is shared over larger intermediary networks of aligned supporters and media sites, it may become laundered or disconnected from its original sources so that parties can play it back as official communication. With a dynamic network analysis and various-time series analysis we tracked content flows from the German version of a global farright anti-immigration campaign across different media platforms, including YouTube, Twitter, and collections of far-right and mainstream media sites. The analysis shows how content from the small extremist Identitarian Movement spread over expanding networks of low-level activists of the Alternative for Germany party and far-right alternative media sites. That network bridging enabled party leadership to launder the source of the content and roll out its own version of the campaign. As a result, national attention became directed to extremist ideas
Replication Data for: Message deletion on Telegram: Affected data types and implications for computational analysis
No full textOnline supplement for: Buehling, K. (2023). Message deletion on Telegram: Affected data types and implications for computational analysis. Communication Methods and Measures. https://www.doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2023.2183188. Please see the full paper for a description of data and methods.Funder: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
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Award number: 16DII125
Funder: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung
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Award number: 13N1604
BRAT Rapid Annotation Tool
Get PDFIn the context of interdisciplinary collaboration, especially with colleagues from computer science, communication and media research has for some time been confronted with a wide range of research software with which it has had little prior experience. In addition to programming languages such as Python or R, these include specific tools for text analysis that represent an alternative to previous variants of computer-assisted content analysis. With the brat rapid annotation tool (BRAT) we present such an alternative in this paper and review it against the background of our experience in using it. BRAT is a web-based open-source text annotation tool that was developed by an international team of computer scientists about ten years ago. The article introduces the tool and its most important features, presents examples for its use in qualitative and quantitative content analyses on the basis of three case studies, and finally evaluates it with regard to potentials and difficulties for the field
The AI Act Proposal: Towards the next transparency fallacy? Why AI regulation should be based on principles based on how algorithmic discrimination works
Get PDFArtificial Intelligence (AI) can entail large benefits as well as risks. The goals of protecting individuals and society and establishing conditions under which citizens find AI “trustworthy” and developers and vendors can produce and sell AI, the ways in which AI works have to be understood better and rules have to be established and enforced to mitigate the risks. This task can only be undertaken in collaboration. Computer scientists are called upon to align data, algorithms, procedures and larger designs with values, ‘ethics’ and laws. Social scientists are called upon to describe and analyse the plethora of interdependent effects and causes in socio-technical systems involving AI. Philosophers are expected to explain values and ethics. And legal experts and scholars as well as politicians are expected to create the social rules and institutions that support beneficial uses of AI and avoid harmful ones. This article starts from a computers-and-society perspective and focuses on the action space of lawmaking. It suggests an approach to AI regulation that starts from a critique of the European Union’s (EU) proposal for a Regulation commonly known as the AI Act Proposal, published by the EU Commission on 21 April 2021
Rechtsdurchsetzung durch Technologie. Grundlagen und rechtliche Bedingungen am Beispiel des Einsatzes von Filtertechnologien im Urheberrecht
No full textAutomatisierte Systeme zur Filterung rechtsverletzender Inhalte im Internet sind insbesondere zum Schutz des Urheberrechts bekannt. Doch seit der Verabschiedung der DSM-Richtlinie hat das Thema eine weitere Dimension gewonnen. Der Einsatz automatisierter Systeme wird nunmehr gesetzlich nahegelegt. Dadurch entfällt die im Rechtssystem gleichsam mitgedachte faktische Freiheit zum Rechtsverstoß. Dies wirft neue Fragen auf, denen Sophie Beaucamp aus verfassungsrechtlicher Perspektive, einer Wohlfahrtsperspektive sowie aus rechtstheoretischer Sicht nachgeht. Zentral ist dabei die Rolle der Nutzerinnen und Nutzer, die maßgeblich für die Zukunftsfähigkeit des Einsatzes solcher Systeme sein wird. Hier skizziert die Autorin Schutzmechanismen, die das rechtsunterworfene Individuum in seiner Subjektqualität wahrnehmen, während das Potential der Technologie genutzt wird
Deglobalization, Reconfiguration, or Business as Usual? COVID-19 and the limits of reshoring of globalized production
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has seemingly reinforced the need for geographic restructuring and a rehoring of production, as it has demonstrated the vulnerability of globalized production. This article provides an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the geographies of production, looking particularly at developments in the automotive, electronics, and clothing industries. Criticizing overly simplified prospects for deglobalization, we argue that the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be interpreted as a trigger for a general retreat from global manufacturing but rather as an event that is reinforcing long-standing shifts toward more multipolar production and consumption. While the issue of global production network resilience has attracted great attention in corporate strategies and industrial policies, re- or nearshoring of production networks is only one of several strategies and it has hardly been implemented so far. Ongoing disruptions and, above all, geoeconomically/-politically and environmentally motivated policies could well lead to a shift in investment and sourcing patterns. Political efforts in this direction are, however, limited by pre-existing global economic development paths and the balance of power associated with them.This work has been funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany (BMBF) (grant no.: 16DII111, 16DII112, 16DII113, 16DII114, 16DII115, 16DII116, 16DII117 – „Deutsches Internet-Institut“
Enlightening Confusion: How Contradictory Findings Help Mitigate Problematic Trends in Digital Democracies
Get PDFThis thematic issue includes ten articles that address previous contradictions in research on two main trends in digital democracies: news avoidance and political polarization. Looking at these contradictions from different angles, all contributions suggest one aspect in particular that could be important for future research to investigate more specifically possible countermeasures to harmful trends: the individualized, self-reflective way in which media users nowadays engage with political content. The increasingly value-based individualization of media use may be a hopeful starting point for reversing harmful trends to some degree by addressing individual media users as a community with a common base of civic values, rather than addressing them in their limited social group identities