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Information, Communication and Society
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Life (online): an introduction to the #AoIR2020 special
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Journal: Information, Communication and Society
Manuscript ID RICS-2021-0272
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Manuscript Type: Special Issue Paper
Life, internet studies, association of internet researchers, infrastructures,
Keywords:
data inequalities
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URL: http:/mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rics Email: ics@tandf.co.ukPage 1 of 5 Information, Communication and Society
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3 Life (online): an introduction to the #AoIR2020 special issue
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Abstract
8 Our contemporary life is an intertwined arrangement of ‘Life’ with digital technologies.
9 Increasingly, we are seeing the prevalence of automation and machines, predominantly
10 through artificial intelligence (AI), as a means to make sense of our worlds, engage with our
11 employers, understand the political system and interact with our social lives as some of the
12 key methods among a wide variety of other interpersonal communication processes. Not
13 only are these often machine-based activities seen through digital communication itself, but
14 also in the surrounding regulatory systems, the growing concerns of digital inequality, the act
15 of datafication, and the infrastructures that enable and inhibit digital communication. These
16 are some of the key themes that emerged from the selected papers in this special issue
17 emerging from the 2020 Association of Internet Researchers conference, entirely held online
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and themed around ‘Life’. In this special issue, we present seven papers from senior and
19 emerging scholars within Asia, Europe, Africa and North and South America that address
20 and unpack the contemporary moment of communication in our Life. The papers in this
21 special issue discuss chatbots, games, smart lighting, wearables, doorbells, sensors,
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22 biometrics, and facial recognition technology - very much everyday technologies that shape
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many of our lives. They ground our expectations of AI and highlight the importance of
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context in internet research.
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27 Keywords: Life; internet studies; association of internet researchers; infrastructures; data
28 inequalities
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30 We are pleased to present this special issue of Information, Communication, and Society
31 themed on Life which reflects some of the latest research presented at the annual
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32 Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference, 2020. For the first time in its history,
33 the AoIR conference took place completely online, and across multiple time zones, due to
34 the travel restrictions caused by the COVID-19 Global Pandemic. Hosted by a programme
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35 committee chaired by Kylie Jarrett, (Maynooth University Ireland), and including Caroline
36 O’Sullivan (TU Dublin), Aphra Kerr (Maynooth University) and Eugenia Siaperia (University
37 College Dublin) the team worked closely with the Executive Committee to design an online
38 version of the AoIR conference but also to maintain the lively and generous spirit of the AoIR
39 community. The conference was thus both an experiment in designing a community-focused
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virtual conference, alongside a critical examination of the current state of Internet Studies.
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The month-long AoIR event included specially curated themed YouTube playlists of lightning
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talks for asynchronous viewing and commenting, early publication of Selected Papers of
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45 Internet Research (SPIR), and a host of AoIR-styled social events. The ‘core’ conference
46 happened from 27-31 October 2020, comprising 30 live events including group themed
47 discussions, a keynote fireside chat, a plenary panel, a doctoral colloquium, social hours for
48 attendees, pub quizzes, dancing and karaoke on various platforms across time zones. The
49 YouTube playlists of presenter videos were discussed in live moderated sessions grouped
50 into four themes - Social Life, Political Life (activism, politics, governance etc), Machine Life
51 (AI, algorithms) and Work Life (labour, play, research practices, ethics). The moderated
52 discussions occurred multiple times to facilitate different time zones. A highlight for many
53 was the customised AoIR2020 Town: a low resolution, pixelated virtual space for socialising,
54 with pubs named after well-known bars in Dublin and the facility for avatar customisation and
55 virtual dancing. Attendees gathered here for book launches, serious discussions and more
56 relaxed hanging out. Even the conference awards were extended to acknowledge the online
57 context and included most creative and experimental videos, most memefied talk, best
58 conference tweeter and best non-human participant. The conference thus maintained the
59 finely-tuned balance between lively scholarly debate and (dis) embodied social activities that
60 has become such a known feature of AoIR. Worthy of note is that over 750 people
URL: http:/mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rics Email: ics@tandf.co.ukInformation, Communication and Society Page 2 of 5
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3 participated in the online conference event, watching and debating with the presenters and
4 taking advantage of the online conference formats.
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The conference theme was ‘Life’ which due to the COVID pandemic became Life (Online).
8 Drawing on the 1992 quote by Sandy Stone, “the machines are restless tonight”, the
9 conference sought scholarship that looked at the interconnection between our lives and the
10 increasingly automated machines that continue to learn and adapt within our ‘life’. These
11 digital technologies are present and engaging in our everyday lives through our political
12 perspectives, our sociality and increasingly our intimate-lived moments. In many ways, the
13 intrinsic intertwining of digital technologies with our everyday lives requires continued
14 critique on the impacts of our political, social and work lives. Critical scholarship helps us to
15 understand the relationships digital technologies have on encoding our class, gender,
16 sexuality and race. Further, scholarship that examines the impact of digital technologies on
17 the environment, our political systems and emerging labour dynamics is crucial to
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understanding our digital lives. The conference asked, ‘what is the life that animates these
19 technologies and how does that inform their sociocultural impacts? What are the implications
20 for human life when the machines become restless?’
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22 The conference theme was core to the conference keynote address, which took the shape of
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an informal ‘fireside’ chat. The chat was facilitated by video conferencing software and
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brought together two scholars located in two different continents at the time. Professor Kate
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Crawford, Distinguished Research Professor at NYU and cofounder of the AI Now Institute;
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27 and Senior Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research New York, was joined by Professor
28 Alondra Nelson, President of the Social Science Research Council and Harold F. Linder
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29 Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton to critique and discuss The
30 Pandemic Pretext: Politics of AI After COVID-19. This keynote conversation focused on the
31 shifts in surveillance practices since Covid-19, and the implications for the relationship
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32 between bodies, the state, and the technology sector. How is the pandemic used as a
33 pretext for increasingly rapacious data capture and surveillance? Which communities face
34 the greatest risks? And what are the changing material economies of the new data
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35 extraction platforms? Crawford and Nelson discussed their longstanding projects at the
36 intersection of technology, society and inequality, including Kate’s much-anticipated book
37 Atlas of AI (Yale, 2021) and Alondra’s work with the Public Health, Surveillance, and Human
38 Rights Network at the Social Science Research Council that is mapping the risks to rights
39 and privacy posed by the pandemic.
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41 Beyond the keynote address, the plenary panel invited Professor Rob Kitchin of Maynooth
42 University, Associate Professor Seeta Peña Gangadharran from the London School of
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Economics and Political Science, and Professor Helen Kennedy from the University of
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Sheffield to address the themes of the conference. First, Professor Kitchin spoke of living
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well with data, of data justice and data sovereignty. He discussed the individual and
47 collective tactics for taking back control, drawing from his recently co-authored book, Slow
48 Computing: Why we Need Good Balanced Digital Lives (Bristol, 2020). He was followed by
49 Associate Professor Peña Gangadharan who took a critical perspective on optimization and
50 asked when and how we can refuse these technologies in our everyday lives. Finally,
51 Professor Kennedy discussed living with data and our understanding and perceptions of
52 data practices. She identified three core challenges with current data practices related to
53 inequality, trust and fairness. A lively discussion followed including a focus on the contextual
54 variations of data practices and the requirements for researchers to choose methodologies
55 and approaches that are sensitive to conditions on the ground. The discussion also focused
56 on the ethical and practical issues faced by researchers who collaborated with industry and
57 other actors. Both the keynote and the plenary panel helped to highlight core theoretical,
58 methodological and political issues that were further engaged with by the AoIR community
59 across the four days of the conference. The differential impacts of COVID on everyday lives
60 and research were never far from the agenda.
URL: http:/mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rics Email: ics@tandf.co.ukPage 3 of 5 Information, Communication and Society
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The conference had 366 successful contributions after peer review which included: 215
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papers, 45 panels, 6 fishbowls, 12 roundtables and 6 experimental sessions. Of the
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submitted papers, the most frequent topics related to social media (n=280),
8 algorithms/platforms (n=186) and communities (n=119). From this rich variety of
9 contributions and formats we are pleased to present this curated series of papers. We
10 include seven papers that showcase the work of both senior and emerging scholars on the
11 conference theme, and showcase research conducted in Asia, Europe and both North and
12 South America.
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14 Several common themes emerge from the papers presented here and provide a useful
15 overview of emerging research in the field which deals with AI, broadly construed. A focus
16 on infrastructures emerges as a prevalent theme, taking our attention beyond apps and
17 platforms to the broader assemblages and indeed to the ruins of data infrastructure. The role
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of institutions is also to the fore, focussing our attention on human rights advocates, legal
19 systems, regulation and policy, governments, and intermediaries. The encoding and
20 implications of AI technologies for race emerged in a number of the papers, and the
21 continued and new forms of inequality and data violence that are emerging. The implications
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of AI and smart technologies for workers and for researchers was discussed across the
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conference and again is reflected here in these papers, especially in those papers that
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engage with the experiences faced by minorities, migrants and those in the Global South.
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26 The political economies of infrastructures and data emerges strongly this year, directing our
27 attention towards asymmetries of power and enduring legacies of coloniality. The papers
28 point to attempts to demand more transparency and accountability from AI developers and
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29 states, and explore new ways to give agency to citizens. Discourses about AI can obfuscate,
30 misinform, and inflate our expectations - but AI can also provide playful distraction and new
31 avenues for creativity. The papers in this special issue discuss chatbots, games, smart
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32 lighting, wearables, doorbells, sensors, biometrics, and facial recognition technology - very
33 much everyday technologies that shape many of our lives. They ground our expectations of
34 AI and highlight the importance of context in internet research.
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36 The first article by Chan and Kwok received the AoIR2020 best student paper award in a
37 conference with many high-quality student papers. The paper adroitly brings a variety of
38 capitalism perspective from political economy and the notion of regulatory entrepreneurship
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to the studies of platform economies in an examination of how Uber entered and operated
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both politically and economically in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. The article introduces
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the concept of guerilla capitalism to describe how Uber actively exploited legal gray areas in
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43 each context and how they harnessed their network power to openly contest and reshape
44 legislation politically. The article demonstrates that, despite the fact that Uber’s guerilla
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45 growth strategy remained the same, its political playbooks resulted in diverse dynamics
46 within different regulatory regimes and was relatively more effective in democratic contexts.
47 This article brings a non-Western and comparative perspective which carefully delineates
48 how particular firms and platforms evolve under separate and specific political regimes.
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50 In the next article, Breuer and Pierson turn their attention to the potential for citizen
51 engagement and empowerment in smart cities. Inspired by Lefebvre’s (1968) work on the
52 The Right to the City, the authors critically examine how citizen engagement is enacted in
53 experimental smart city projects across Belgium and the Netherlands. More specifically they
54 explore how data protection rights and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in
55 Europe are encountered and enacted within smart city projects. The results indicate that
56 while GDPR impacts data gathering in public spaces, it is not sufficient to overcome the
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many barriers faced in terms of incorporating citizens as users into participative design and
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decision-making processes in smart city projects. The case studies reveal that the decision-
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making processes in these projects are very much controlled by corporate and legal human
URL: http:/mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rics Email: ics@tandf.co.ukInformation, Communication and Society Page 4 of 5
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3 and non-human actors, and data controllers have a crucial role to play in translating and
4 aligning the various actors and competing interests. Citizens meanwhile are often on the
5 periphery, and rarely consulted in advance. The authors make a strong argument for
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lowering the (literacy) barriers to these discussions for citizens, data controllers and
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developers, and for adequate incentives to enable meaningful and citizen centric smart
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cities.
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11 Our third article presents research on game players of the location based mobile game,
12 Pokémon Go, in two cities in the Global South: Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Nairobi (Kenya).
13 Pokémon Go requires, and indeed takes for granted, that players can freely move through
14 their local environment, have access to a robust network connection and can afford a mobile
15 smartphone with sufficient credit. To date, most of the existing research on location-based
16 games in general and Pokémon Go in particular, focuses on Global North contexts. While
17 some studies have focussed on the challenges faced by rural and low-income communities
18 in the Global North, this study identifies how players experience difficult mobilities,
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19 inconsistent networked connections, and precarious access to internet technologies in two
20 cities in the Global South. They identify how pre-existing social, infrastructural, and
21 economic inequalities shape the interconnections between location-based game play,
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22 mobile phone use, and urban mobilities. However, they also identify emergent player
23 practices, including how players collaborate and care for others during and outside
24 gameplay, how players adjust their mobilities to preserve networked connections and how
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they take advantage of local contingencies in order to play the game. This paper highlights
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how local contexts and material circumstances influence game players and networked game
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play, but also how game players create meaningful online practices despite local
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29 infrastructural and social challenges.
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31 The next article by Bridges focuses our attention on the impact of connected smart doorbells
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32 and data infrastructures upon our lives. Focussing on Amazon’s networked doorbell with a
33 camera, Ring, and associated crime reporting apps, like Neighbours, Bridges argues that the
34 promotional videos and materials for the company, and the affordances of the apps,
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35 deliberately obfuscate how the infrastructure expands and extends the industrial-police-
36 surveillant-state, and enlists users to surveil and police public and semi-public spaces in the
37 city. Focusing on the use of the technology in the US, the paper carefully walks us through
38 how race and class become articulated through the apps, producing discourses of fear and
39 Othering, and replicating historical forms of community surveillance networks from the 1950s
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and 1960s in the South of the US. The key thread throughout this article is that users of
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networked technologies continue to lose control over their datafied lives and that these data
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infrastructures are leading to commercial arrangements between data providers and third-
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parties that are not obvious to end users. By examining the potential impacts for citizens,
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45 especially people of colour, Bridges calls for infrastructural accountability and new forms of
46 oversight and transparency to address ‘asymmetrical power imbalances’.
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48 The next paper by Madianou provides a critical examination of the use of AI in humanitarian
49 operations. Theoretically the paper brings together a decolonial critique of humanitarianism
50 and critical algorithm studies and empirically it draws upon a mixed methods study which
51 includes interviews with a range of stakeholders in the humanitarian sector. Focussing on
52 the use of ‘chatbots’ in different aid contexts the paper carefully interrogates the intelligence
53 of chatbots and the assumptions underpinning the ‘AI for good’ phenomenon. Arguing that
54 chatbots foreground communication efficiency rather than intelligence, the paper finds that
55 the chatbots examined produce an impoverished form of communication between affected
56 communities and aid agencies, that lacks cultural and linguistic sensitivity. The paper
57 concludes that AI technologies in aid contexts can be harmful, largely reflect Eurocentric
58 values and represent an ‘enchantment of technology’ that brings to bear, and reworks,
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colonial legacies and asymmetries of power in new ways.
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URL: http:/mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rics Email: ics@tandf.co.ukPage 5 of 5 Information, Communication and Society
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4 The article by Brodie and Velkova explores the notion of digital ruination through a case
5 study of an abandoned Ericsson Data Centre in Vaudreuil, Canada. In contrast to local
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government and citizen expectations of data centres, the Ericsson case study provides a
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unique insight into the short life (10 months), abandonment and afterlife of data centres and
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infrastructures. By highlighting the material and discursive ruins of this once operational data
10 centre, the authors interrogate the taken for granted belief in ever-growing demand for data
11 cloud services, the promise of digital infrastructures and the actual impact that global data
12 infrastructures have on local communities, beyond the thoroughly examined environmental
13 impacts. The authors highlight the perils of local and regional co-funding models and tax
14 incentives that attempt to lure global technology corporations to establish digital
15 infrastructures in peripheral locations in an attempt to create an urban growth machine and
16 positive economic and social externalities. Brodie and Veloka literally walk through the cloud
17 ruins to highlight what remains when global capital leaves and to interrogate the meaning of
18 obsolescence and digital ruins for local economies, communities and cities.
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20 In a playful, yet sobering approach, our final article by Roig and Martorell explores the
21 Twitter parody account, @covidvid19 to highlight the digital narration of an ongoing public
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22 health crisis. Using a narrative analysis approach the authors examine this hugely popular
23 Spanish parody account which presents COVID as a fictional character who chronicles the
24 crisis from a first person perspective. While starting as an account that embodies the
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“dilemma of making fun of important conflict” (Highfield, 2015: 2041), the authors analyse an
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extensive sample of tweets from the account and interview its (human) creator during the
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early months of the pandemic, to understand how this character driven narrative shifts and
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29 changes, at times receiving significant backlash from its fans and followers, particularly
30 when commenting from a particular political standpoint. They examine how the account is
31 built, the relationship between mainstream media and the parody account, and how other
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32 socially connected accounts change and impact on the narrative over time. By creatively
33 unfolding the analysis across several ‘chapters’, Roig and Martorell demonstrate that a
34 character-based twitter account can humanize the COVID crisis and provide important
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35 insights into this evolving form of fictional narrative.
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37 We hope you enjoy this sample of the latest scholarship from the Association for Internet
38 Research and the insights they offer into everyday experiences of data technologies and AI
39 in various locations around the world.
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References
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44 Lefebvre, H. (1968). Le droit à la ville. SEUIL.
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45 Highfield, T. (2015). Tweeted joke lifespans and appropriated punch lines: Practices around
46 topical humor on social media. International Journal of Communication, (9), 2713–2734.
47 https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/3611
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