In this study, I examine blame attribution in the ultra-Orthodox new media following the Meron disaster using qualitative content analysis of the public digital sphere. Findings reveal a structural bifurcation between institutional news websites and social media counter-publics, in which marginalized groups negotiate communal boundaries. Institutional outlets maintain a positive social identity, while social media facilitate an internal moral reckoning. In these digital spaces women challenge selective accountability and patriarchal modesty discourses by rejecting their traditional roles as spiritual scapegoats and demanding more gender-equitable accountability. Thus, through technology usage traditional communal gatekeeping is being transformed into a complex, shared, distributed sense-making process.
Despite increased use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making by governments and employers, an understanding of how users resist them is lacking. We conducted a systematic review of studies capturing algorithmic resistance published between 2000 and 2021, subjecting 7996 to a comprehensive screening process that yielded seven studies for analysis. These studies, focused on digital labor platforms and social media algorithms, showed three themes: how resistance is conceptualized, what forms it takes, and its outcomes. We found that studies of resistance are limited by disparate disciplinary contexts and conceptual redundancy, demanding interdisciplinary dialogue to avoid fragmentation.
In this article, we conceptualize the information society as an exaptive dynamic system by integrating evolutionary systems theory and information philosophy. Exaptation, defined as the repurposing of elements evolved for one function to serve entirely different roles, provides critical insights into the unique evolutionary patterns of contemporary society. While existing theoretical frameworks have described modern social formations as information society, network society, or post-industrial society, these approaches often treat information merely as content or resource, rather than as an evolving ontological entity. By synthesizing Floridi's information philosophy with Wong et al.'s evolutionary selection framework, we demonstrate how the information society evolves through three interconnected mechanisms: static persistence (stability of foundational elements), dynamic persistence (functional adaptation), and exaptation (creative repurposing of existing elements to generate novel functions). In digital environments, this exaptive process accelerates significantly, prompting the introduction of the concept of free-floating functions-informational patterns that rapidly decouple from their original contexts to serve diverse purposes with minimal material reconfiguration. The transformation of information from an auxiliary element supporting other processes to an independent economic entity exemplifies this exaptive dynamic, reshaping social structures and simultaneously generating new opportunities and vulnerabilities.
In this paper I contribute to the debates on digital democracy by broadening how pluralism should be understood in the platform era. Existing accounts typically equate pluralism with intensified competition among interest groups and the proliferation of voices online. In contrast, I argue that the Internet and social media research should reorganize that democracy works through processes of coordination, negotiation, and mutual responsiveness among interdependent actors. Building on Charles Lindblom's seminal yet underutilized concept of partisan mutual adjustment, I propose an expanded framework for pluralism research that takes into account the fact that democratic outcomes emerge through iterative interaction between institutional and non-institutional participants. The argument is developed by looking at four domains: agenda-setting by influential blogs, advocacy by online and fan communities, bargaining and disruption in the gig economy, and distributed knowledge production in citizen science. Across these domains, the I show that digital environments enable not only competitive pluralism but also political mutual adjustment.
The 2020 lockdowns increased internet use, raising questions about how digital inequalities have evolved. In this study we examined changes in internet access between 2020 (during lockdowns) and 2023 (post-pandemic), focusing on shifts across sociodemographic variables (gender and age) as well as personal (health), economic (employment and income), social (offline social support and internet support quality), and cultural (education) capitals. Analyzing longitudinal data from Dutch adults surveyed in 2020 and 2023, our findings show that inequalities in internet attitudes, device diversity, internet skills, and engagement in online economic, social, cultural and personal activities persisted. However, interaction effects revealed changing patterns over time.
We employ the "from the margins" approach to assess how the Finnish digital welfare state stacks up against the ideals of the welfare state. Based on empirical research on the experiences of asylum seekers, unemployed persons, and older adults, our study reveals how datafication transforms the relations between the citizens and the welfare state, in which historically, data on citizens has been used for their benefit. Our findings reveal the emergence of new forms of inequalities related to digital exclusion that cut across distinct social groups and connect with basic needs in life. Furthermore, they reveal negative affective orientation toward the data welfare state.
In this article, we introduce dis/connective identification to theorize how diasporic actors negotiate belonging, safety, and visibility through strategic forms of digital engagement and disengagement under conditions of transnational repression. Challenging dominant emphases on persistent connectivity in digital migration and diaspora studies, we conceptualize dis/connective identification as a process of modulating symbolic, social, and affective relational distances across hybrid media environments. Drawing on 13 in-depth interviews with organizers of the post-2019 Hong Kong digital diaspora, we identify three specific practices, namely moralizing platform use, calibrating political security and trust, and expressing affective belonging, with which diasporic actors navigate multifaceted uncertainties across contexts within a bounded, risk-aware community. Rather than treating disconnection as failure or absence, we argue that it should be understood as a mode of connective agency that varies in intensity, temporality, and visibility. Our study contributes to digital diaspora studies, disconnection studies, and connective action research by highlighting the relational and contingent nature of diasporic identification under specific sociotechnical conditions.
What connects the diverse forms of work in the platform economy? In this article we examine the intersections that define and shape this evolving labor landscape. Through an analysis of two case studies - content creators on Instagram and TikTok and Amazon warehouse workers in Italy-we identify three key connecting dimensions: augmented precarity, metrics-based control, and performative reputation. Despite the significant differences between these workers, they share common conditions that reveal broader characteristics of digital capitalism. By exploring these dynamics, we shed light on how the platform economy redefines work, power, and labor relations in contemporary capitalism.
Access to information (ATI) laws have now been widely adopted by a diverse array of countries and political systems. Yet, the effectiveness of such laws in ensuring that government agents respond appropriately to ATI requests is highly uneven. We contend that at least two factors matter for government responsiveness in this context-bureaucratic incentives and nonprofit technology. In the former case, government agencies often have incentives to be non-responsive to ATI requests when confronted, or empowered, by security concerns. On the other hand, nonprofits and nonprofit technology can offset such incentives, thereby improving responsiveness. We evaluate these contentions in relation to the Hong Kong government's responsiveness to individual ATI requests. In doing so, we consider the countervailing effects of (i) Hong Kong's National Security Law and (ii) the increasing role of nonprofit technology in Hong Kong's ATI ecosystem. Our findings confirm our expectations and suggest that Hong Kong's National Security Law worsened responsiveness to ATI requests whereas nonprofit technology's growing role in this context improved responsiveness. On balance, the latter effect offsets the former, underscoring the critical role of nonprofit technology in safeguarding ATI against government backsliding.
The ways that humans acquire information is undergoing a fundamental change comparable to the introduction of Gutenberg's moveable type and printing press and the development of broadcast systems in the twentieth century. In the Internet Era - the first decades of the twenty first century - individuals seek information on subjects that are salient or important to them from sources they trust at the time that they need or want that information. In this analysis, we use a 33-year longitudinal study of Generation X beginning in middle school and extending to midlife to describe how youth and young adults in Generation X build and use the skills and interests necessary to function in a just-in-time information acquisition system.
Neoliberalism has become orthodoxy in the present, erasing competing paradigms and alternative imaginings. Chile's radical Cybersyn project from 1971 to 1973 offers a departure point for an alternative path, albeit one that was abruptly and violently extinguished. We revisit this moment by fine-tuning AI language models on the words and writing of Salvador Allende, the Chilean President, and Stafford Beer, the cyberneticist who helped to design the project. We conduct interviews with these simulated personas, focusing on how their revolutionary ideas might be taken up in the present. We then use an AI model to generate five-year-plans from 1973 to the present, simulating an alternate history guided by Cybersyn and a progressive agenda. We frame these interventions as socialist infrastructuring that cultivates a more expansive socialist imagining. This work is not about the viability of planned economies, but about the 'inspirability' of exploring other value-systems in the present, allowing us to break out of our future-on-rails to envision alternative ways of organizing economy and society.
Platforms often champion user value as the primary objective to optimize for in recommender systems. However, as commercial marketplaces platforms must also balance the interests of other stakeholders, such as advertisers, creators, investors, and regulators. This easily creates conflicts of interest - whose value is more important to consider in recommendation systems. To address this issue, I develop a moral economy framework to platform studies that integrates studies of content recommendation with theories of fair allocation of recourses. Drawing on examples from digital media platforms, I show how three prominent rentier mechanisms shape which kind of content and creators that are likely to gain visibility, attract attention and conversely, acquire economic capital. The findings demonstrate that platforms often override user agency by promoting the content the platforms want users to see, blur distinctions between organic and paid recommendations, and create artificial scarcity by favoring commercially lucrative creators. These practices raise concerns about the sustainability of original content production versus standardized and derivative output, fueled in part by generative AI, and the marginalization of critical and diverse voices. As platforms continue to dominate digital media distribution, their moral economies warrant closer scrutiny to preserve original, diverse and critical perspectives in society
This article conceptualizes the nature, form, and organization of digital assets - the algorithms, data, and computing infrastructure used by capitalist firms toward various ends. Historically, creating or using machines has involved long-term fixed investments and fixed organizational practices of asset use. This article argues that the rise of Big Cloud introduces hyper-flexibility in the domain of assets and upends this source of fixity for the rest of the capitalist economy. Scalable digital assets act as a fix to various firm-level constraints and rigidities. The discussion is organized around three core questions. 1) What is distinctive about digital assets? 2) How is this asset regime structured? 3) What are the impacts of this scalable asset regime? The point is this: scalable digital assets leased from Big Cloud signal the potential liquification of fixed capital relations. This threatens to undo an important mechanism of stabilization, equally intensifying volatilities, and activating new tensions. Instability and flux thus become the defining features of "cloud capitalism."
Digital childhood today unfolds within a technocrisis: a condition in which pervasive digital infrastructures and algorithmic logics outpace the ethical, institutional, and social frameworks needed to govern them. Through a composite case study of an Irish primary school, in this article we examine the frictions that emerge as communities respond to the saturation of childhood by smartphone technologies. We argue that the governance of digital childhood is not merely about protection, but about the production of socially and economically legible subjects-disciplined for life within data-driven systems. Drawing on Albert Borgmann's concept of focal practices, we explore how local actors reintroduce friction, intentionality, and care into children's digital lives. These situated interventions challenge the presumed inevitability of technological progress and offer modest but meaningful alternatives to platform-driven futures. Our study contributes to debates in digital anthropology, science and technology studies, and the politics of socialization by showing how resistance to digital saturation is enacted not through grand refusal, but through everyday acts of recalibration and relational repair.
Companies like Manchester United and Nike host some of the largest online communities on social media to promote their brands. Increasingly, these communities experience incidents of cyberbullying amongst their members. Drawing on research from information studies, psychology, and marketing, we report on observations of eight online brand communities to reveal four conceptual elements - Aggression, Interpersonality, Reinforcing Platform Architecture, and Identity Focus - of consumer brand-cyberbullying (Study 1). Subsequently, we use survey data to show that a key explanation for why consumers who identify with brands bully others lies in their materialistic aspirations, and the extent of this depends on their online community participation, prior cyber-bullying experiences, and brand involvement (Study 2). Our findings provide insights for companies in shaping their policies and interventions to address this problematic behavior of online consumers.
The burgeoning field of cyberdeviance lacks a unified conceptual framework, hindering classification and understanding of its subtypes and underlying psychological mechanisms. To address this gap, we conducted two studies. In Study 1 (N = 20), employing the repertory grid technique, we identified five key dimensions of cyberdeviance. In Study 2 (N = 268), participants rated 16 cyberdeviant behaviors on these dimensions, revealing three subtypes: data-oriented, interpersonal, and non-prototypical cyberdeviance. Our findings suggest a shift from singular cyberdeviance investigation toward recognition of its diverse subtypes, each necessitating tailored interventions. By adopting a dimensional approach, we transcend categorical and technocentric perspectives, enabling examination of behavior clusters across cultural and temporal contexts. Our work underscores the importance of integrating foundational deviance theories and expanding conceptual frameworks to comprehensively grasp cyberdeviance phenomena.
With their growing power and ownership of the top layer of the internet, Big Tech are investing in submarine cables and are redefining the cable industry and, by extension, the digital economy. By exploring two submarine cables - Equiano Cable, a cable independently built and owned by Google in Africa; and MainOne Cable, a cable originally built by a Nigeria company in West Africa and later acquired by a US-based company - this article examines the complexities of critical infrastructure ownership. Through these case studies, this article, in the context of the Next Billion User discourse, highlights the ongoing redefinition of competition through obsolesce and re-making of middlemen through co-location technologies. It notes the evolution of Google from a content provider to a telecommunication, media, and tech company - the convergence of different sectors under Google's control. Finally, it opens opportunity for further research on cables, centralization, convergence, coloniality, digital risks, and other critical issues that may arise from Big Tech's growing ownership across the pillars of the digital economy. It also highlights the landscape of connectivity infrastructure in West Africa (with a specific focus on Nigeria).
