Vol. 4: No. 1: 2022

Exploring Siri’s Content Diversity Using a Crowdsourced Audit

Abstract

This study aims to describe the content diversity of Siri’s search results in the polarized context of US politics. To do so, a crowdsourced audit was conducted. A diverse sample of 170 US-based Siri users between the ages of 18-64 performed five identical queries about politically controversial issues. The data were analyzed using the concept of algorithmic bias. The results suggest that Siri’s search algorithm produces a long tail distribution of search results: Forty-two percent of the participants received the six most frequent answers, while 22% of the users received unique answers. These statistics indicate that Siri’s search algorithm causes moderate concentration and low fragmentation. The age and, surprisingly, the political orientation of users, do not seem to be driving either concentration or fragmentation. However, the users' gender and location appear to cause low concentration.

Tweeted Attitudes towards Women Parliamentary Candidates in Kuwait: A Social Dominance Perspective

Abstract

This study explores how Kuwaitis use Twitter to communicate their attitudes towards women Parliamentary candidates (WCs) in a traditionally male-dominated society, and how these tweeted attitudes are thematically constructed, either negatively or positively. The study also explores how these attitudes differ according to gender and evolve quantitatively and qualitatively over subsequent elections. A total of 1744 tweets about all eight women candidates in 2013 posted for 40 days prior to the Kuwait Parliamentary Election were retrieved and analyzed. The tweets posted about the two women candidates of those eight who continued to run in 2016 and 2020 were also analyzed in terms of length, content, and themes. Gender significantly correlated with attitudes in the first election, but not in the subsequent two elections. Tweeted attitudes turned to be more elaborate, information-based, and longer over consecutive elections. The dominant positive theme was generic, whereas the dominant negative theme was specific, and candidate based. Women candidates were praised for acting like men, whereas they are mocked for looking like men.

#VACHINA: How Politicians Help to Spread Disinformation About COVID-19 Vaccines

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on how Brazilian politicians helped to spread disinformation about Covid-19 vaccines, discussing legitimation strategies and actors that played a significant role on Twitter and Facebook. Based on data gathered through CrowdTangle and Twitter API, we selected the 250 most shared/retweeted posts for each dataset (n=500) and examined if they contained disinformation, who posted it, and what strategy was used to legitimize this discourse. Our findings indicate that politicians and hyperpartisan accounts have a key influence in validating the Brazilian president’s populist discourse through rationalization (pseudo-science) and denunciation (against the vaccine). The political frame also plays an important role in disinformation messages.

It's Crowded at the Bottom: Trust, Visibility, and Search Algorithms on Care.com

ABSTRACT

Trust, visibility, and the deepening of existing inequalities are major themes within the platform care work literature. However, no study to date has applied these themes to an analysis of worker profiles. I investigate both how workers communicate trustworthiness through their profiles on Care.com, the world’s largest care work platform, and which of these profiles are rendered more and less visible to clients. Through a qualitative content analysis of profiles (n=60) sampled from the top and bottom search results in three different US zip codes, I find that visibility is often related to connectivity, response time, and positive reviews, and who is rendered visible mirrors preexisting inequalities. The language of “passion” for the job is common across top and bottom profiles, indicating a contradiction between the deemphasis on professionalization and the high level of connectivity and responsiveness present in top profiles.

Ethical Use of Informant Internet Data: Scholarly Concerns and Conflicts

Abstract

This article explores the scholarly concerns and conflicts debated by authors in the field of the use of informant internet data in research. The importance lies in informant protection and how to minimize harm to them, a long-standing cornerstone of research practice. It is also a public domain issue as increased calls for data privacy grew because of reported data breach scandals. Although not a new problem, academic researchers and university ethics boards struggle with concerns over data use and are in conflict about managing the problem. This article uses thematic analysis to identify, analyze and interpret patterns of concerns and conflicts over internet data use. Data was obtained from academic publications on these issues. Three themes from this data are discussed with examples demonstrating the types of, and complexity of, scholarly concerns and conflicts. These themes are: the problems of informant data use risks, gaining mass informed consent and the challenges ethics boards face, especially conflicts with researchers over internet data use on projects. This article contributes insights into a widely, and continuously, debated area which is constantly evolving as privacy laws and public awareness place pressure on researchers and ethics boards to address protecting informant public internet data.

Memetic Moments: The Speed of Twitter Memes

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how speed shapes internet culture. To do so, it analyses ‘memetic moments’ on Twitter, short-lived and rapidly circulated memes that quickly reach saturation. The paper examines two ‘memetic moments’ on Twitter in 2018 and 2019 to assess how they develop over time. Each case study comprises a week’s worth of relevant tweets that were analysed for temporal patterns. We analyse these ‘memetic moments’ through Lefebvre’s (2004) work on rhythmanalysis, arguing that the temporal patterns of memes on Twitter can be understood through his concepts of repetition, presence and dialogue. While seemingly trivial, memetic moments underscore the didactic relationship between social media and news media while also providing a way to approach complex social issues.