Information Communication & Society

Breuer, Johannes; Kmetty, Zoltán; Haim, Mario; Stier, Sebastian

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2097015pmid: N/A

Although other social media platforms have seen a steeper increase in users recently, Facebook is still the social networking site with the largest number of users worldwide. A large number of studies from the social and behavioral sciences have investigated the antecedents, types, and consequences of its use. In addition or as an alternative to self-reports from users, many studies have used data from the platform itself, usually collected via its Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). However, with the drastic reduction of data access via the Facebook APIs following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, this data source has essentially become unavailable to academic researchers. Hence, there is a need for different modes of data access for what Freelon (2018) has called the ‘post-API age’. One promising approach is to directly collaborate with platform users to ask them to share (parts of) their personal Facebook data with researchers. This paper presents experiences from two studies employing such approaches. The first used a browser plugin to unobtrusively observe Facebook use while users are active. The second asked participants to export and share parts of their personal Facebook data archive. While both approaches yield promising insights suitable to extend or replace self-reports, both also entail specific limitations. We discuss and compare the unique advantages and limitations of both approaches and provide a list of recommendations for future research.

Ruiner, Caroline; Klumpp, Matthias

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2097016pmid: N/A

Digitalization supports the development of platform organizations, changing work relationships between individuals and organizations. This paper analyzes workers’ perceptions of autonomy and control in for- and non-profit platform organizations. Based on a mixed-methods study combining qualitative interviews and a quantitative questionnaire in digital food supply chains, this contribution empirically evaluates the interrelation of autonomy and control for two German sample groups of riders and volunteers. The analysis shows that the perceptions of autonomy and control are constitutive of work outcomes and thus essential for understanding work relationships in platform organizations. These perceptions differ in for- and non-profit contexts, providing insights to motivation and labor processes in platform work.

Scherr, Sebastian; Arendt, Florian; Haim, Mario

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2097017pmid: N/A

This study focuses on the changes in the global digital divide produced by language-based, algorithmic information disparities in relation to crisis-prevention resources for suicide available through the Google search engine. We used agent-based testing to emulate Google searches performed in 17 countries and in 16 different languages as a direct replication and extension of previous work. We compare data collected in 2017 with data collected in 2021. Our analyses revealed that Google searches in English from within the United States still have the highest likelihood of triggering the display of additional crisis-prevention information prominently shown in addition to the regular search results (i.e., Google’s suicide-prevention result). Searches in Spanish from within the United States are informationally disadvantaged. Display rates are only slightly lower in other English-speaking countries and when searches are performed in English. While information disparities and digital divides narrowed between 2017 and 2021, substantial differences in the display of crisis-prevention resources remain observable within multilingual countries, especially when other languages compete with English. In Bahrain, South Africa, and Sweden, the crisis-prevention information functionality seems unimplemented. Our findings suggest that the use of automated computational methods is both useful to continuously observe the implementation of new algorithmic functionalities and necessary to hold global media institutions accountable for their actions.

Guerra, Abel; d’Andréa, Carlos

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2109979pmid: N/A

This article discusses how Brazilian ubertubers – Uber drivers that manage YouTube channels focused on their riding experience – systematise and make public different ways of knowing surge pricing (SP), an algorithmic-oriented system that uses price adjustments to redistribute drivers across urban space. Taken by the Uber as an instrument to measure and regulate market conditions, SP mediates drivers’ pragmatic and affective daily practices, materialising a asymmetrical power relation embedded into a neoliberal governmentality. The study explores 25 videos produced and shared by five consolidated Brazilian ubertubers, focusing on how this specific kind of digital influencer systematises and perform collective knowledge on how to increase earnings with surge pricing. The metaphors, hypotheses, and theories, the ubertuber’s tactics to deal with SP’s instability and with the risks of working on peripheral areas, and the efforts to investigate the logics of a ‘new surge’ are the main issues approached in the case study. In the conclusions, we discuss how ubertubers’ ambivalent relations with surge pricing reveal their wider attempts to navigate neoliberal governmentality and precarious conditions.

Maddox, Jessica

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2109980pmid: N/A

Influencers are a defining feature of the contemporary social media landscape, but little has interrogated how these individuals may privilege information sharing as essential to their brand. This article interrogates the role of the knowledge influencer, or those who perform micro-celebrity to convey information and expertise to lay audiences. Knowledge influencers can be doctors, lawyers, or anyone, regardless of class, who is an expert in their occupation. In doing so, knowledge influencers perform what I call calibrated expertise, or the curated performance strategy in which experts harness social media affordances, platform dynamics, and aspects of micro-celebrity to impart information. Through a case study analysis of social media veterinarians on Instagram, I show how calibrated expertise is discursively performed, and knowledge influencers emerge, at a cultural moment in which neoliberalism continues to blur the lines between work and play, and populist backlashes against experts are ubiquitous. By navigating micro-celebrity, authenticity, and relatability, knowledge influencers put a human face and contemporary cultural spin on expertise. Though, this does not mean the knowledge influencer is the answer to sweeping distrust, but rather, is an untapped resource for considering information sharing and power dynamics in neoliberal, populist times.

Lenzi, Michela; Elgar, Frank J.; Marino, Claudia; Canale, Natale; Vieno, Alessio; Berchialla, Paola; Stevens, Gonneke W. J. M.; Boniel-Nissim, Meyran; van den Eijnden, Regina J. J. M.; Lyyra, Nelli

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2109981

Lee, Jihye; Hamilton, James T.; Ram, Nilam; Roehrick, Katherine; Reeves, Byron

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2109982pmid: N/A

This study examines how individuals across income classes encountered payday lenders’ appeals online and what their smartphone use reveals about their psychological reactions to these messages. We utilized novel Screenomics data, comprehensive sequences of screenshots (N = 13,498,584) collected every 5 seconds from the smartphones of lower-income and higher-income adults (N = 65) in U.S. metropolitan areas for 2 months. While examining a person’s everyday smartphone use, we observed 103 natural exposures to advertisements of payday lenders who had in the past generated consumer complaints with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. We describe how individuals encountered payday loan ads through various digital channels despite the ad bans of major technology companies. We employed a quasi-experimental design to test for differences in participant actions immediately before and after ad exposure. Multilevel analysis results show that exposure to payday loan ads led to notable changes in the lower-income individuals’ smartphone use. Directly after seeing the ads, the lower-income individuals engaged with content that contained fewer future-oriented words, switched between applications more frequently, and avoided content that evoked negative emotions. Such effects were especially pronounced among the lower-income individuals who lacked the support of social safety nets, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly known as food stamps) and unemployment benefits. In contrast, there were no changes noted in smartphone use among the lower-income individuals receiving social safety net assistance and higher-income individuals. These findings highlight the nuanced yet impactful psychological consequences of digital experiences, an underexplored aspect of digital inequalities.

Habich-Sobiegalla, Sabrina; Kostka, Genia

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2113421pmid: N/A

Are citizens more willing to share private data in (health) crises? We study citizens’ willingness to share personal data through COVID-19 contact tracing apps (CTAs). Based on a cross-national online survey with 6,464 respondents from China, Germany, and the US, we find considerable variation in how and what data respondents are willing to share through CTAs. Drawing on the privacy calculus theory and the trade-off model of privacy and security, we find that during the COVID-19 pandemic, crisis perceptions seem to have only limited influence on people’s willingness to share personal data through CTAs. The findings further show that the data type to be shared determines the suitability of the privacy calculus theory to explain people’s willingness to transfer personal data: the theory can explain the willingness to share sensitive data, but cannot explain the willingness to share less sensitive data.

Ballucci, Dale; Patel, Molly-Gloria

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2113422pmid: N/A

With society becoming increasingly digital, new opportunities are afforded to potential offenders to weaponize digital features and affordances to carry out their crimes. As a result, concerns persist over online forms of crime, particularly cybercrime involving sexual exploitation, and what can be done about them. Drawing on interview and focus group data collected from 70 sex crime investigators from police service organizations across Canada, we uncover police perspectives on online sex-based crime. We demonstrate that police perceive online crimes to not necessarily be new forms of crime, but rather altered by digital media in terms of methods and weapons being used. We focus on uncovering the features and affordances police identify as contributing to the increase in crime itself as well as the creation of greater opportunities for crime to occur. In addition, resulting from crime shifting into digital spaces, we uncover the challenges digital media has presented for police in terms of how they handle, respond to, and investigate online crime. We discuss these challenges and their impact on policing and provide solutions for combatting them moving forward. Overall, this article contributes to the current body of literature investigating online crime and policing in the digital age by drawing on the theoretical framework of affordances and offering police perspectives on online sex-based crimes.

Ahn, Soyun; Baik, Jeeyun (Sophia); Krause, Clara Sol

doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2113817pmid: N/A

The proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on social media has prompted democratic countries around the world to discuss adequate regulations to limit the power exerted by platforms over national politics. As a result, the once ostensibly uniform content moderation practices of social media companies are becoming increasingly territorialized, and the governance of online political speech is constantly negotiated between global social media platforms and national governments. To comprehend the evolving landscape of online political speech governance, this paper scrutinizes how Facebook has adapted its content moderation practices to the political and legal contexts of three democratic nations: the United States, Germany, and South Korea. We assessed national laws and governmental documents to explain the regulatory landscapes of the three countries, and used VPNs and corporate PR materials to see how Facebook’s platform design and public communication diverge by location. The findings suggest that the seemingly ‘splintering’ regulatory frameworks still have a ‘centralizing’ effect: Facebook formally complies with national laws, but its platform interface and communication activities steer users away from the local systems and towards its centralized operations. We discuss future implications for the regulation of online political speech in democratic nations.