2,740 research outputs found
Postdigital dupery and its epistemic vices
Full text linkThis is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer on 21/09/2022, available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00340-1 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version. For re-use please see Springer's accepted manuscript terms of use.In early 2020, Alison MacKenzie and Ibrar Bhatt guest edited the Special Issue of Postdigital Science and Education, ‘Lies, Bullshit and Fake News Online: Should We Be Worried?’ (MacKenzie and Bhatt 2020), and in early 2021, Alison MacKenzie, Jennifer Rose, and Ibrar Bhatt published their edited book, The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era: Dupery by Design (MacKenzie et al. 2021b), in Postdigital Science and Education book series.Footnote 1 To continue this important work, Sarah Hayes emailed Alison, Jennifer, and Ibrar to arrange this conversation. Alison and Ibrar met with Sarah online in May 2021 and talked for two hours, with Jennifer providing her insights via email, to be blended into the dialogue.Published onlin
William Pulteney Alison : activist philanthropist and pioneer of social medicine
No full textThe thesis looks in detail at three inter-related aspects of
Alison's life. It examines, firstly, his role in the development
of Edinburgh's rudimentary 'health' network, achieved through the
expansion of the existing medical charity structure and the
introduction of a more interventionist and coordinated approach to
the city's health problems. It traces, secondly, the development
of Alison's social thought - in 1820 he believed that medical and
practical relief for the poor could and should be supplied through
the voluntary charities and only when that proved unsatisfactory
through the poor law, whereas by 1840 he argued that public health
should be the responsibility of government and that the excessive
increase in poverty and disease in Scotland, which he believed had
occurred, was proof that the charitable and legal relief provided
was inadequate. Finally, Alison's influence on the passage of
Scottish poor law and public health legislation in the 1840s and
1850s is examined - the latter involving an assessment of how far
he was responsible for the legislative delay. The poor law debate,
1840-1845, which reveals the forces shaping the reform and the
prevailing attitudes to poverty, highlights the challenge which
Alison's opinions represented and the resulting turmoil in Scottish
social thinking, while his reasons for opposing health legislation,
which established London control are of great importance. They
reveal differences in the rationale behind, and way in which, the
concept of public health was developed in Scotland and England.
Unlike Chadwick and his supporters, Alison emphasised poverty
amelioration and sanitary reform. Part of the explanation for the
differing opinions lay in their respective miasmatic and
contagionist theories for fever generation, but it also reflects,
perhaps more significantly, the impact of European medical police
ideas on Scottish medical opinion - Alison's view of public health
closely resembled that of the French hygienists
Bad Faith, Bad Politics, Bad Consequences: The Epistemic Harms of Online Deceit
No full textIn this chapter, we take our cue from Machiavelli to explore whether deceit by those who govern us is good for the polity. We argue that it is not: all forms of deception carry great risks that infect social and political relations. It is particularly harmful when these deceits are conducted in online platforms, given the speed at which lies, fake news, misinformation, disinformation, and other such epistemic vices spread. Bad faith and bad politics lead to bad consequences: polarisation, mis/distrust, and anger, which opportunistic politicians ruthlessly exploit in social and mass media. To help us argue why the suspension of ethical conduct in politics and online media can rarely be justified, and why deceit is corrosive of trust, we draw on a number of analyses: strategic disinformation campaigns; the consumption of mass and social media driven by dis/mistrust; Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism and Bok’s examination of lies; and the ‘polariser’s toolkit’. We suggest that an alternative to the tactics of the polariser is the humanist toolkit: humanising propaganda based on empathy, and, naturally enough, an education that critically and extensively engages in digital epistemologies
A feminist postdigital analysis of misogyny, patriarchy and violence against women and girls online
No full textIn this chapter, I offer a postdigital feminist analysis of misogyny and its harmful manifestations online. The Internet is a powerful tool in the systemic and structural dissemination of gender-based violence against women and girls (VAWG). This violence includes technology-facilitated harmful behaviour, along with technological tools to violate victims’ rights, using devices like smartphones and surveillance cameras. I will offer a postdigital critique of VAWG, arguing that at the root of these behaviours is misogyny, a conceptual, descriptive, and analytical account of which I will give here. I will also analyse this phenomenon from the perspective of epistemic injustice to show how asymmetries in testimonial exchanges and hermeneutical resources sustain misogynistic, patriarchal practices. Despite the scale and prevalence of digital and cyber gender-based misogyny and violence, Big Tech are under little to no legal obligation to address the abuse, though legal measures such as the Online Harms Bill (UK) are in progress, and should, I argue, incorporate a VAGW Code of Practice. I conclude with a tentative formulation of what feminist postdigital analysis could consist in and its relevance to the postdigital condition.<br/
Repositioning the graphic designer as researcher
Full text linkIn academic terms, the discipline of graphic design is relatively young. Consequently the position of the discipline within academic territory, and the role of the designer, continue to be debated. In part, these debates have been a product of attempts to define and defend the discipline’s borders from within, in order to establish a sense of the role of graphic design and the graphic designer as commensurate with other disciplines both within and beyond art and design. In recent years graphic designers have variously been defined as ‘authors’, ‘producers’ and ‘readers’, yet none of these definitions seem to have provided any kind of productive or lasting impact within the academy. This paper suggests that rather than continue to seek territorial definitions and positions from within, it could be more productive to look beyond the confines of the discipline. Gaining a broader, interdisciplinary perspective on, and understanding of, qualitative research methods from other disciplines may enable the graphic designer to more fully position his or her practice within the wider academy. Such a perspective could help facilitate the repositioning and redefinition of the graphic designer as ‘researcher’ - a move that would be productive in relation to the future development of postgraduate research within the discipline
Constructing postdigital research: method and emancipation
No full textThis book delves into the various methods of constructing postdigital research, with a particular focus on the postdigital dynamic of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the interplay between method and emancipation. By answering three fundamental questions - the relationship between postdigital theory and research practice, the relationship between method and emancipation, and how to construct emancipatory postdigital research - the book serves as a comprehensive resource for those interested in conducting postdigital research.Constructing Postdigital Research: Method and Emancipation is complemented by Postdigital Research: Genealogies, Challenges, and Future Perspectives, also edited by Petar Jandrić, Alison MacKenzie, and Jeremy Knox, which explores these questions in theory.<br/
Introduction: The Genesis of Dupery by Design
No full textOnline fake news, misinformation, disinformation campaigns, and computational propaganda are all problematic, posing threats to democracy, undermining trust, and increasing polarisation. In the introduction to this edited collection, Dupery by Design: The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era, we discuss the genesis of the book. The scale, speed, amplification and quality of ‘information’ that spreads across social media, particularly the harms of deceit on individuals and the polity drew our attention. Technologies and social media platforms in particular create both new norms for discourse, radically alter a priori notions of ‘public sphere’, and enable new forms of power and inequality to exist. The reasons why and how people deceive are complex, lacking unified understanding, and this collection offers some insight into these processes. The contributors to this collection demonstrate in highly diverse ways that deception is a pervasive feature of human interactions, and takes diverse forms, ranging from the cynical to the artistic and humorous. The collection contributes the growing field of postdigital scholarship
Conclusion: Some Resolutions to Dupery and the Power of Online Platforms
No full textIn this conclusion to Dupery by Design: The Epistemology of Deceit in a Postdigital Era we reprise the themes of the book. We record that dupery is now being exercised on an industrial scale worldwide by liberal democratic and authoritarian governments to manipulate public opinion using ‘cyber troop’ tactics - and the number is growing. Social media are excellent environments for civic participation and public discourse; they are also phenomenally effective at reaching large numbers of people quickly, micro-targeting with tailored messages, and harvesting personal data. This power and capacity make social media very attractive to, for example, governments, political parties and conspiracy theorists whose aims are, often, to exploit social media to spread disinformation, and undermine public trust in government and institutions. The chapters in this edited collection addressed the many approaches to detecting, understanding, and combating dupery, ranging from the philosophical and pedagogical, the performative and fictional, to media and information literacy. In addition, we discuss what is required to combat the adverse effects on human welfare and health: transparency, social media literacy, procedural accountability, humane technology and human rights
Interview with Alison Frank, September 25, 2009
No full textInterview Themes: How Frank chooses research topics (00:50)
Aspects of her training as a historian Frank found useful (07:00)
Books that have inspired and informed Frank's work (11:11)
On the role of area studies for scholarship on East-Central Europe (14:00)
"Internationalizing" the history of East-Central Europe (19:30)
Advice to young historians/scholars working on the region (22:11)Interview with Alison Frank, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. Interview conducted in Ithaca, NY on September 25, 2009. Professor Frank is the author of a number of articles and an excellent book on the oil industry in the Habsburg Monarchy entitled Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia. She is now working on a project on the coastline of Austria-Hungary.1_9lz5ekh
Can we really "forget" militarization? A conversation on Alison Howell's martial politics
No full textFirst paragraph: Alison Howell’s (2018) article “Forget ‘Militarization’: Race, Disability and the ‘Martial Politics’ of the Police and of the University” has already generated many rich conversations. With its bold critique of formulaic uses of the term “militarization,” and a call to observe the ways in which everyday life is shaped by martial politics, Howell's contribution especially gave pause to many of us who readily use the concept of militarization. One of Howell's core arguments is that the fixation with a perceived process of militarization is grounded in liberal fantasies of a “pre” or normal peaceful liberal order. She counters this, stating: “Normal politics” is not overtaken by “militarization”; instead, martial relations in here in liberal politics as they are enacted on populations deemed to be a threat to civil order or the health of the population, especially along lines of race, Indigeneity, disability, gender, sexuality and class. (, 118) Howell uses the term “martial” to capture the ways in which knowledges, relations, and technologies often taken for granted as “normal” and civilian are, historically, both “of war” and “war-like.
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