1,348 research outputs found
L’approccio socio-cognitivo per studiare la percezione del rischio e l’attenzione al pericolo. Cos'è in frame?
No full textMilano è una città percepita come sicura? Come la vivono le donne? Queste domande nascono dalla consapevolezza che le città non sono "corpi neutri", ma vengono percorse da pratiche d'uso e da vissuti emozionali che mutano al mutare del genere. Nella "società liquida", priva degli stabili punti di riferimento del passato, vi è una diffusa impressione di insicurezza, amplificata dal clima socio-politico, che favorisce l'installazione di telecamere e gli appelli alla maggiore presenza di forze dell'ordine. La percezione del pericolo poggia solo in parte su cause oggettive: l'amplificazione sociale dei rischi avvertiti discende tanto dai media, che giocano un ruolo rilevante nelle rappresentazioni dell'ambiente che ognuno si costruisce, quanto dalla risposta emozionale a esperienze dirette e indirette di episodi di aggressione, violenza o microcri-minalità. Questo libro propone i risultati di una ricerca sul modo in cui la rappresentazione (cognitiva ed emozionale) che le donne di Milano hanno della città, dei suoi quartieri e dei suoi spazi, condizioni e limiti la loro libera circolazione attraverso di essi. L'obiettivo è quello di illustrare le pratiche femminili di appropriazione della città, ma anche di fornire uno stimolo alle istituzioni pubbliche per interventi di tipo comunicativo/informativo e azioni finalizzate ad aumentare la sicurezza di particolari aree cittadine, che possano consentire alle donne di vivere la città senza barriere e senza paure. Contributi di Guido Di Fraia, Anna Manzato, Maria Angela Polesana, Riccardo Pronzato, Elisabetta Risi
CRITICAL PEDAGOGY AS A PRACTICE OF RESISTANCE TO ALGORITHMS
No full textToday using the Internet implies primarily using digital platforms,
that actively participate in the co-construction of social life. In this scenario, users
have often been depicted as powerless, subjected to exploitative commercial practices, and
as having internalized their condition of surveilled and datafied individuals. However,
little attention has been paid to how individuals make sense of algorithms in their everyday
life and how exert their agency while using platforms. Furthermore, little is known
regarding how researchers can actively elicit critical reflections regarding structures of
datafication, thereby helping individuals increase their awareness and data literacy. This
paper contends that auto-ethnographic diaries, elaborated following a critical pedagogical
approach, can be valuable to investigate user practices and how algorithms are enacted in
everyday life by those practices. Furthermore, a critical pedagogy approach can raise
awareness among individuals regarding processes of pervasive datafication and surveillance,
thereby being a way to redistribute social value to the public while doing social research
and a practice of independence and resistance to algorithmic surveillance
Algorithms and hegemony in the workplace: Negotiating design and values in an Italian television platform
No full textIn recent years, several scholars have highlighted the necessity to scrutinize the practices and material settings in which algorithmic models are designed, in order to unpack the working activities and socio-cultural constructs underlying their production and deployment process. Drawing on a multisited ethnography, this paper investigates the practices of tech workers within the corporate environment of an internet television platform, the hierarchical relationships between different professional figures, and how these individuals frame algorithms and contribute to the enactment of these systems with their activities. Findings highlight the hierarchical organization of tech work and the subordination of operative figures to the goals imposed by business clients and to both internal and external forms of control. Specifically, it emerges how the subalternity of tech workers is materially and discursively constructed and forms of causal, dispositional and facilitative power exerted on them. In this environment, frictions, negotiations as well as concealing strategies by tech workers regarding the design and meaning of algorithms emerge, thus showing their cultural, contingent and multiple composition. Within the framework of Giddens’ structure/agency cycle, it is shown how everyday working activities and relationships contribute to the reproduction of hegemonic arrangements in the workplace, and how these hegemonic arrangements are at the core of algorithmic production, thus playing a key role in the framing, construction and enactment of these systems
Enacting Algorithms Through Encoding and Decoding Practices
No full textIn the field of digital sociology, debates continue about the best strategies to analyse the social role of algorithms, their design and uses, as well as their implications. To contribute to this conversation, this paper bridges a practical approach to culture – which considers culture as an outcome of social activities – with the tradition of cultural studies – which frames culture as a set of practices in the construction and interpretation of media messages and technological artifacts. Specifically, I focus on how Nick Seaver’s “algorithms as culture” approach intersects with Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” model and the following applications to algorithmic media of different authors. Through this analysis, I argue that algorithms are culturally enacted by the encoding and decoding practices of their producers and end users. Thus, algorithms are considered as brought into being by the activities underlying their design, as well as by their uses, analyses, and interpretations. Furthermore, I propose different methodological strategies to analyse how encoding/decoding activities culturally enact algorithms within the social realm
Algoritmi, strutture e agire sociale: Un’analisi sociologica
No full textThis book examines the everyday relationships with algorithmic media at the sociological level, taking into consideration both structural and social actor-related dimensions. Specifically, drawing on a critical review of multiple theoretical contributions and the analysis of two empirical cases involving university students and healthcare professionals, it discusses how algorithmic media exert hegemonic power in contemporary society. Within this power, however, it is highlighted a dialectical, symbiotic, and fluid relationship between structure and agency, in which the structures activated and reproduced by algorithmic media can become spaces of action and reflection for users. In the conclusions, it is argued that sociology itself can offer tools to facilitate a critical understanding of technologies and the development of activities that can counter the hegemonic power of platforms
Algorithmic selfing: An existential media analysis of time and identity
No full textThis article conducts an existential media analysis of the temporalities favoured by algorithmic media and experienced by users and the related possibilities of selfhood. Specifically, I advance the concept of 'algorithmic selfing' to indicate a form of processual Self that is temporarily constructed and incessantly reconstructed within the temporal relationships individuals develop with algorithmic media. This process of algorithmic selfing occurs through three interrelated dynamics: (1) algorithmic individuation, (2) algorithmic transduction and (3) recursivity. The result is a 'worldly dwelling' that emerges in a relationship conflated with the objectives, logic and operations of tech companies. To do so, the article draws on empirical studies on digital time and identity, on the application of existential philosophy to media theory, on critical algorithm studies and communication theory. Building on this framework, the article explores the ontological and epistemological implications of the process of algorithmic selfing, offering insights for social, philosophical and media theory
Enacting and re-politicising co-design: a critical perspective on eHealth interventions
No full textThe recent institutionalisation of the co-design approach in eHealth interventions has resulted in an increased focus on providing technological solutions rather than addressing social issues, which has led co-design to gradually lose its political value. The aim of this theoretical article is to propose a re-politicisation of the co-design process of eHealth technologies through the application of the concept of “enactment”. Drawing on various interpretation of this concept, this paper argues for the merits of scrutinising the co-design of eHealth technologies as a dual process of enactment. One the one hand, eHealth technologies are enacted by the practices of individuals involved in the co-design process, such as researchers, stakeholders, tech producers and users. On the other hand, these computational systems enact individuals as objects of concern through structural elements like affordances and datafication processes. Thus, the concept of “enactment” serves as a critical lens for exploring how different figures involved in co-design both shape and are shaped by the socio-technical systems they participate in producing, whilst also examining how diverse forms of social power, inequalities and knowledge imbalances are negotiated and brought into being within this dynamic and relational process
The emotional ambiguities of healthcare professionals’ platform experiences
No full textThis paper investigates how healthcare professionals experience digital platforms in their work practices and how these relationships enable forms of emotional labour and contribute to shaping their emotional health.
Methodologically, the contribution draws on audio-diaries kept by 15 healthcare professionals and a final semi-structured interview conducted with the same informants. The research material was analysed using open and axial coding techniques, in a grounded theory fashion.
Findings provides meaningful insights to the literature on the emotional labour of healthcare professionals, as well as to studies on digital health and labour. Specifically, we show that participants associate different and even contrasting reflections and emotional states with their relationships with digital platforms. Thus, there is not exclusively one trajectory that can explain the implications of media uses, as different and potentially conflicting emotions coexist within the same experience. Given this scenario, we argue that it can be fruitful to use the lens of ‘ambiguity’ to scrutinise the ambivalences and tensions characterising platform experiences, and how emotional labour in healthcare intertwines with technological developments. Moreover, we advocate for the development of critical digital literacy skills among healthcare professionals
L’approccio socio-cognitivo per studiare la percezione del rischio e l’attenzione al pericolo. Cos'è in frame?
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