Assessing Externalities: new WP5 deliverables available

The following deliverables are the result of the work conducted by the EUMEPLAT WP5 task forces:

  1. Surveillance and Resistance
  2. Choice and Algorithms
  3. Toxic Debate and Pluralistic Values
  4. Destructive Technologies (and War)
  5. Gender in Societies

Deliverable 5.1

Assessing Externalities: Surveillance and Resistance

This deliverable focusses on the thematic area of surveillance and resistance to surveillance, through digital platforms, in Europe. It consists of three main sections. The first section has two parts. Part-one presents a theoretical reflection on surveillance and resistance to surveillance, addressing the interdisciplinary field of surveillance studies. This theoretical reflection elaborates on the multitude of approaches to and definitions of surveillance/resistance, presents the main actors, practices and technologies of surveillance/resistance, and further explores political, cultural and social aspects and dimensions of surveillance/resistance, as they are addressed in the international academic literature. Par-two of the first section includes a brief presentation of practices of digital surveillance/resistance in Europe, in specific areas, pertinent to the EUMEPLAT project, namely, economy, migration, gender, health and the environment.

The second section of this deliverable reflects on the research conducted within the EUMEPLAT project and its relevance for surveillance/resistance. This reflective and reflexive part scrutinises the research, data and analyses produced as part of the first four EUMEPLAT work package deliverables (WP1-WP4), and identifies a series of issues, dimensions and debates, pertaining to surveillance/resistance, facilitated through communication and media platforms in Europe.

The third section, which has a future-oriented focus, involves future scenario development and analysis, concerning surveillance/resistance, enabled through communication and media platforms in Europe. Even if the scenarios are fictional and for this reason a number of these scenarios were not considered by their creators as likely to materialise, still, they are highly relevant as they encapsulate visions –that is, hopes and fears– about societies and about Europe. Hence, this section presents the findings of the scenario analysis, by focussing on the scenario creators’ visions about the future, without engaging in evaluative judgements about how these creators imagine the future, but by exploring the underlying attitudes, assumptions and ideologies that inform these visions.

The three sections of this deliverable –theoretical elaboration, reflection on EUMEPLAT research, and future scenario development and analysis – allow to: a. deliver a condensed state of the art in surveillance studies, from a communication and media studies perspective, b. address a theoretically informed reflection concerning surveillance/resistance, through digital platforms, in Europe, as it appears in contemporary research (see EUMEPLAT WP 1-4), and c. sketch out future outlooks, in the specific area of study, examining how these visions of the future reflect main assumptions, fears and hopes about Europe.

Download the full deliverable here.

Deliverable 5.2

Assessing Externalities: Choices and Algorithms

This deliverable is part of a group of five that each focuses on one of the themes related to the future of European media platforms. In our case, we focus on a theme titled Algorithms and Choices, which we translated into the dynamics between agency and structure, in algorithmically governed platform environments. In order to entangle the complexity of relationships in these processes – connected to the rising impact of algorithms in our everyday decisions, their regulation by European institutions and the platformization of governance – we adopted an approach grounded in structuration theory. Structuration theory (ST), initially developed by Giddens (1984), is the starting point in the theoretical reflection that continues with more contemporary approaches to ST, which has been favored by information systems researchers, but also researchers from platform studies. We prefer broader approaches that allow us to see algorithmic assemblages of entangled relationships between platform users, platform corporations, algorithms, and institutions.

One of the issues that cuts through the deliverable is algorithmic transparency. The problematics and workings of algorithms and platforms are often framed as being opaque structures or “black boxes”. While the first section of this deliverable provides a theoretical reflection on structure and agency in platform environments and algorithmic assemblages, the second section looks back to the earlier work of the EUMEPLAT project. Even though the previous research did not particularly zoom in on the workings of algorithms, these processes were manifested in implicit (or more explicit) ways in the deliverables. In this second section, we revisit the research done in four EUMEPLAT work packages from the angle of algorithmic transparency as one of the recurring topics. The reflection on algorithm regulation in EU law in Work Package 1, on recommendation systems on VOD platforms in Work Package 3, and finally, the Twitter algorithm that makes some posts or agents more visible than others in Work Packages 2 and 4 allow us to further enrich our theoretical reflection on the role of algorithms and choices (or their limitations) in algorithmically governed platform environments.

The first two sections stand as theoretical support for the empirical part of this deliverable, which is a qualitative future scenario analysis that uses methods of future studies research. The future studies component of this deliverable is not aiming at forecasting and predicting the future but at capturing the imaginaries about the future. Rather than playing clairvoyant and hypnotizing the crystal ball, the empirical part analyses how the imaginary about the future of European media platforms is constructed by the diversity of experts. These future scenarios, focused on one of the themes, Algorithms and Choices, were produced by 29 Delphi+ participants and the EUMEPLAT researchers. The future scenarios analysis is developed on the axis of structure/agency and tech-centric/human-centric and around four actors, which emerged when the theory was filtered through our data, namely: platform users, platform corporations, algorithms and institutions. Ten scenarios (as clusters) were developed around these actors, and they further provided a perspective on interdependencies between these actors in future imaginaries related to European platform landscapes that involve transhumanistic/neurofuturistic visions of humans enhanced by algorithms, platformization of state or hopes in supranational institutions in securing the algorithm literacy and transparency.

Download the full deliverable here.

Deliverable 5.3

Assessing Externalities: Toxic Debate and Pluralistic Values

The aim of the study can be described as twofold:

(1) We explore online incivility and toxicity with the aim of understanding better the dynamics that trigger and bring about toxic debates. This involves the conceptualisation of toxicity as a public-political issue rather than an interpersonal issue of psychological harm. In addition, by proposing that toxicity is an umbrella term that could be better understood as a gradient, we try to investigate which degrees or which aspects of incivility may permit deliberation, which, despite being emotionally laden, still leaves room for rational understanding. Indeed, the presupposition that an ideal speech situation would be rational rather than emotionally charged can be contested on the grounds that fallacies are frequently camouflaged through the rational construction of arguments. The pathos/logos dichotomy thus ceases to hold ground in much the same manner as any distinction between private/public domains becomes increasingly hazy in the present conjuncture of social media use, where the performative effects of language in a private context easily seep into public space.

(2) We also aim to explore the normative concepts that can be useful to examine and tackle the phenomena grouped under the label of toxicity. In this regard, the sources or grounds of normativity are distinguished into interpersonal or micro, intersubjective or meso, and institutional or macro levels. Beyond these levels, we establish a connection between pluralistic values and toxic debates, taking into account that pluralism is intertwined with free speech and inclusive open debate, which may entail the freedom to use language in a way that collides with the sensibilities of those with whom we share public space.

The paper is structured into three main parts. After defining toxicity and incivility, Part I offers some basic theoretical reflections, namely on the roots or sources of the normative concepts of toxicity, and the who, what and how of toxic debates. Part II reviews the relevant research findings conducted in the EUMEPLAT Project to connect these reflections to the present-day experience of platformed communication. Part III presents an analysis of the Future Scenario Essays produced within the framework of the Project’s Work Package 5: it offers a view of the futures of platformed and algorithmically mediated communication and some prescriptions by the experts taking part in the Delphi+ workshops. We conclude by bringing together and discussing the diverse issues and interests that centrally relate to the theme of toxic debates and pluralistic values.

Download the full deliverable here.

Deliverable 5.4

Assessing Externalities: Destructive Technologies

This deliverable is part of a series of five that each zoom in on one of the particular dynamics that impact on platformization and Europeanity. In our case, we focus on a theme that was originally (and formally) labelled ‘destructive technologies and war’. In order to capture the multiplicity of intersections between platforms (and other communication technologies), the societal harm they can do and the scale of their impact—ranging from individual, over Europe to global—we prefer to use a broad approach to conflict. This broad approach—grounded in conflict theory—consists of the acknowledgement that violent or armed conflict is only one type of conflict, and that conflict also has a crucial presence in democratic societies, where conflict’s (potentially) violent nature is transformed into non-violent versions of conflict. Moreover, we also want to pay attention to the complexities of violent conflict, and its hybrid frontiers with these democratic contexts, which will result in a basic typology of three main types of conflict: Armed conflict, grey zone conflict and democratic conflict. This basic typology is then enriched with a reflection on platforms and communication technologies, again avoiding a too narrow approach that would limit the analytical strength of this typology, and instead focussing on how communication technologies (including platforms), with their discursive-material dimensions, can strengthen and weaken the different types of conflict.

While the first part of this deliverable provides a theoretical reflection on conflict and communication platforms, its second part returns to the earlier work of the EUMEPLAT consortium. Even though the earlier EUMEPLAT research was not explicitly focussed on conflict and communication platforms, revisiting the research done in the first four EUMEPLAT work packages allows us to further enrich the theoretical reflections on the role of communication technologies in conflict, while at the same time creating the benefit of not having to return to the conceptual discussions on platforms and Europeanity (see, for instance, Carpentier, et al., 2022; Carpentier, et al., 2023). Together, these first two parts provide theoretical support for the empirical part of this deliverable, which is a future studies component.

It is important to stress that the future studies component of this deliverable is not a forecasting exercise, but the analysis of a series of future scenarios—in relation to conflict and communicative platforms—as they were developed by 29 Delphi+ workshop participants and by the EUMEPLAT consortium partners. More than trying to predict the unpredictable, this empirical section provides an analysis of the (discursive) constructions of the future through a diversity of voices. Mapped on an axis of positivity/negativity, this qualitative future scenario analysis establishes six main future scenarios, four of which express a deep concern about this future, while two of them are more hopeful in their formulation. Together, these six scenarios provide a perspective on the anxieties and hopes of the (more creative representatives of the) European societies, allowing for a better understanding of the complexities of the relationships between conflict and communication platforms.

Download the full deliverable here.

Deliverable 5.5

Assessing Externalities: Gender in Societies

In order to understand gender injustice and combat gender discrimination on media platforms in Europe, we need to understand what gender injustice currently looks like and -importantly- what it can look like in the future. How can we imagine gender in Europe? We will use the conceptual frame of gendered othering to analyze gender in relation to social media platforms. To start, we dive deeper into theoretical reflections on gender. We explain what gender and sex and their differences are. This is done with an eye for intersectionality. We need to use the intersectional lens to then expand on the meaning of gendered othering. After having explained this concept, we consider the data from the EUMEPLAT project. We can see how different studies within the project have contributed to an understanding of gender in social media platforms. This allows us to understand the current situation with regards to gender, othering and social media. Now, we know what gender injustice currently looks like on social media. However, part of our research question remains; what can it look like in the future? For this, we have produced and gathered various possible future scenarios.

We worked on the basis that grounded theory and data are conceptualised as a site of ideological negotiations and we looked for similar discourses and reoccurring arguments. After analyzing them from a discourse theoretical perspective (Foucault, 1975; Arribas-Ayllon & Walkerdine, 2008), we were able to identify three main themes.

These themes show us in different ways what gender (in)justice (on social media) can look like in 20 or 30 years from now. Some of the future scenarios are more or less desirable. All of them show where we as a European society could end up being.

Understanding future scenarios and possibilities in relation to gender is important because it entails what we have to do in the present to either prevent or encourage different future scenarios from happening.

Download the full deliverable here.

All deliverables are available on the EUMEPLAT Community in Zenodo.