1,721,006 research outputs found
Digital Media and Knowledge Production Within Social Movements: Insights From the Transition Movement in Italy
Full text linksponsorship: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This article grounds in research activites carried out in the period 2016-2017 within the framework of the project "MAKERS- Movements as knowledge producers and learning spaces in the digital age" funded by the Scuola Normale Superiore. (Scuola Normale Superiore)status: Publishe
La Network Analysis con NodeXL
No full textIl volume persegue un duplice obiettivo. Da una parte, offre una guida all'uso di NodeXL (Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel), uno dei programmi più recenti per tracciare, esplorare e visualizzare diversi tipi di reticoli - non solo quelli formati dalle interazioni tra attori sociali nei vari spazi della quotidianità offline ma anche quei sistemi di relazione ibridi e multidimensionali che risultano dall'uso di social media come Twitter, Facebook o YouTube; dall'altra parte, propone alcuni esempi di come le procedure di mappatura e analisi dei reticoli online permesse dal programma possano essere utilizzate per investigare processi di partecipazione politica collettiva, un tema in relazione al quale si è recentemente acceso un intenso dibattito.
In questo modo, La Network Analysis con NodeXL intende fornire ai propri lettori non solo gli strumenti necessari per utilizzare in totale autonomia uno strumento innovativo per l'analisi di rete ma, più in generale, vuole offrire un'introduzione metodologica consapevole allo studio delle interazioni online, sempre più spesso chiamate in causa come vero e proprio "motore di trasformazione" delle società contemporanee ma ancora relativamente poco considerate come vero e proprio oggetto di studio
The integrative power of online collective action networks beyond protest. Exploring social media use in the process of institutionalization
No full textIn this article, we aim at expanding the event-based and protest-centered perspective that is typically adopted to study the nexus between social media and movements. To this aim, we propose a network-based approach to explore the changing role that these tools play during the dynamic unfolding of movement processes and, more particularly, over the course of their institutionalization. In the first part, we read the added value of social media as a function of the ‘integrative power’ of the networks they foster – a unique and evolving form of sociotechnical power that springs from the virtuous encounter between social media networking potential and social resources. In the second part, we investigate this form of power by focusing directly on online networks’ structure as well as on the type of communication and participation environments they host. We apply our proposed approach to the longitudinal exploration of the Twitter networks deployed in the period 2012–2014 during three annual editions of the transnational feminist campaign ‘Take Back The Tech!’ (TBTT). Results from our case study suggest that, over time, TBTT supporters do in fact make a differentiated use of social media affordances – progressively switching their communicative strategies to better sustain the campaign’s efforts inside and outside institutional venues. Thus, the exploration of the TBTT case provides evidence of the usefulness of the proposed approach to reflect on the different modes in which social media can be exploited in different mobilization stages and political terrains
The cement of civil society. Foundations for a more genuine understanding of online collective action
No full textFor Symposium abstract is not require
’Solidarietà sconvenienti’. Reti online di estrema destra contro e per la riforma dell’Europa
Full text linkIn spite of an increasing interest for how ICTs entwine with collective participation dynamics, the ways in which their relational and communicational potential is exploited by extreme right organizations remain overlooked. In this article, we aim at moving forward along this research avenue by focusing on how extreme right organizations and groups employ digital communications to sustain the construction of «inconvenient solidarities», i.e., systems of relations amongst actors that oppose and distort current efforts of transnational democratization - particularly at the European level. By focusing on the websites of extreme right organizations in six European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) and by making a combined use of digital research tools and social network analysis, we explore how these organizations make a strategic use of ICTs to connect in the online space and the arguments they move forward to criticize and reform current projects of European integration. Our results suggest that ICTs sustain the construction of inconvenient solidarities in heterogeneous ways, supporting different modes of online conversations amongst extreme right websites which, in turn, affect their capacity to propose shared critiques and proposals to reform the European Union
Internet intermediaries and online gender-based violence
No full textIn a research landscape that is increasingly concerned with understanding the implications of communication technologies for our societies, a thorough comprehension of the nexus between information and communication technologies and gender-based violence remains far from achieved. The review of company policies performed by the Association for Progressive Communications (APC) clearly shows that 'the standards across the terms of service (ToS) of many internet intermediaries are primarily reflections of their legal obligations, and not much more than that'. Intermediaries are not neutral actors because, through their ToS, they determine the benchmarks against which the acceptability of digital behaviours and content - hence, the existence of digital harms - can be assessed. International organisations do in fact recognise that intermediaries bear some responsibility for the protection of human rights. However, a much stronger call to intermediaries to act responsively has come from the heterogeneous realm of civil society
Promises and Pitfalls of Legal Responses to Image-Based Sexual Abuse: Critical Insights from the Italian Case
No full textOver the last decade, online image-based sex abuse (IBSA)—the digital non-consensual diffusion of intimate and/or sexual images, commonly referred to as “revenge porn”—has been increasingly targeted by national governments. This is indeed the case in Italy, which indexed IBSA among other legally punishable forms of domestic and gender-based violence within its 2019 “Red Code law”. In this chapter, we propose to assess levels of responsiveness of this provision starting from a conceptualization of online IBSA as a form of violence perpetrated in and through human-nonhuman assemblages, and characterized by relational connections, unique affective forces, and agentic capacities. Read through the lens of assemblages, the “Red Code” law is labelled a provision ineffective by design affected by three main limitations: first, the peripheral and instrumental role assigned to digital media; second, the disregard of the more-than-human nature of online IBSA, which confines its legal response within a strict model of deterrence; third, the lack of recognition of the collective and distributed nature of online IBSA
Promises and pitfalls of legal responses to image-based sexual abuse: ritical insights from the Italian case
No full textOver the last decade, online image-based sex abuse (IBSA)-the digital non-consensual diffusion of intimate and/or sexual images, commonly referred to as "revenge porn"-has been increasingly targeted by national governments. This is indeed the case in Italy, which indexed IBSA among other legally punishable forms of domestic and gender-based violence within its 2019 "Red Code law". In this chapter, we propose to assess levels of responsiveness of this provision starting from a conceptualisation of online IBSA as a form of violence perpetrated in and through human-nonhuman assemblages, and characterised by relational connections, unique affective forces, and agentic capacities. Read through the lens of assemblages, the "Red Code" law is labelled a provision ineffective by design affected by three main limitations: first, the peripheral and instrumental role assigned to digital media; second, the disregard of the more-than-human nature of online IBSA, which confines its legal response within a strict model of deterrence; third, the lack of recognition of the collective and distributed nature of online IBSA.</p
Global Governance and ICTs: Exploring online governance networks around Gender and Media
Full text linkIn this article, we address transformations in global governance brought about by information and communication technologies (ICTs). Focusing on the specific domain of “gender-oriented communication governance” we investigate online interactions amongst different kinds of actors active in promoting gender equity in and through the media. By tracing and analyzing online issue networks, we investigate which actors are capable of influencing the framing of issues and of structuring discursive practices. From the analysis, different forms of power emerge, reflecting diverse modes of engaging in online interactions, where actors can operate as network ‘programmers’, ‘mobilizers’, or ‘switchers’. Our case study suggests that, often, old ways of conceiving actors’ interactions accompany the implementation of new communication tools; while the availability of a pervasive networked infrastructure does not automatically translate into meaningful interactions amongst all relevant actors in a specific domain
Designing anticipatory policies through the use of ICTs
No full textThis paper seeks to achieve a better understanding of how and under what conditions current digital communication technologies can become an asset to the design of effective policies. In order to do so, we bridge two strands of reflection that have hitherto developed quite independently – i.e. policy design studies and researches on the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to reform the public sector. We start from the assumption that different governmental political and technical capacities shape different spaces for action and thus different types of policy design in which policy-makers can involve citizens via ICTs in three modes: co-design; design fine-tuning; crowdsourced policy design. According to this framework, we analyse three different ‘revelatory case studies’ in which ICTs have been employed by governments while designing policies: Iceland’s recent experiment to redraft collectively its constitution; La Buona Scuola, the latest Italian public education law; and the Finnish Avoin Misteriö, a platform for crowdsourced legislation. By exploring the different modes in which ICTs have been integrated in the formulation of these three policies, we show that it is possible to disentangle different and more or less effective ways of exploiting ICTs’ networking and communicative potential for designing successful public policies
- …
