The controversy about the human curators behind Facebook Trends has grown, since the allegations made last week by Gizmodo. Besides being a major headache for Facebook, it has helped prod a growing discussion about the power of Facebook to shape the information we see and what we take to be most important. But we continue …
Continue reading Algorithms, clickworkers, and the befuddled fury around Facebook Trends
Gizmodo has released two important articles (1, 2) about the people who were hired to manage Facebook's "Trending" list. The first reveals not only how Trending topics are selected and packaged on Facebook, but also the peculiar working conditions this team experienced, the lack of guidance or oversight they were provided, and the directives they …
Continue reading Facebook Trending: It’s made of people!! (but we should have already known that)
Documentary film maker Laura Poitra's exhibit in the Whitney Museum presented an immersive installation covering issues of mass surveillance, the war on terror, Guantánamo Bay, occupation, the US drone program and torture. Some of these issues have been investigated in her films, including Citizenfour, which won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Documentary, and in …
Continue reading Astro Noise: A survival guide for living under total surveillance
This is a video and the transcript of my Ted talk at Ted x TTU in April 2016. It's about body image, consumer economy and selfies. http://youtu.be/q6Mp-kTwjYA * I have some sayings here; let’s do a show of hands if you’ve heard these: “don’t judge a book by its cover” or “beauty is only skin …
Continue reading We’re all selfish superficial and too fat? Tedx talk by Kat Tiidenberg
The Social Media Collective is looking for a Research Assistant to work with us at Microsoft Research New England in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Starting in July 2016 the MSR Social Media Collective will consist of Nancy Baym, Tarleton Gillespie, Mary L. Gray, Dan Greene, and Dylan Mulvin in Cambridge, Kate Crawford and danah boyd in New York City, as well …
With generous contributions from the Social Media Collective extended family, I have put together a list that brings together academic and popular writing on metaphors of data, along with pieces that approach questions of data and commercial/political power. The goal in assembling this list was to catalog resources that are helpful in unpacking and critiquing different metaphors, ranging from the …
part of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-50) paper submission deadline: June 15, 2016, 11:59pm HST. For fifty years, the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) has been a home for researchers in the information, computer, and system sciences (http://www.hicss.org/). The 50th anniversary event will be held January 4-7, …
(This post is a slightly-tweaked version of a talk I gave as a respondant to Gabriella Coleman’s recent talk at the University of Pennsylvania. I'm grateful to DCC for inviting me, and to Biella Coleman for provoking these ideas.) There is something both over and under-determined about the word “hacker.” On the one hand, “hacker” …
Once again we faced an embarrassment of riches in selecting postdoctoral researchers. It is exciting to see the diversity and quality of research coming up and gives us great optimism as we think about the future of research about social dimensions of technology. We are delighted to introduce two new Postdocs who will join us …
Well, it was another exciting season of reviewing a rich batch of applications for our 2016 PhD Internship Program. We love reading about all the great work out there but really, really, really hate that we have just a few seats for our intern program. Please spread the word about this program and throw your …
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