global social media impact

(Mis)Managing Algorithms of Hate: The Nexus of Big Tech and the State in India

 Aishani Khurana  July 19, 2022

In February 2020, Delhi witnessed one of the worst incidents of communal violence where 53 people, mostly Muslims, were killed, hundreds were injured, and property worth millions was destroyed. While the complicit role of the police, as an instrument of the state, became visible in engendering violence, the role of social media, especially big tech like Meta (formerly Facebook), in exacerbating violence remained imperceptible. Although the preponderance of hate speech and its unbridled reposting on social media is not new or surprising, what merits attention is the way in which the big tech is absolved of its responsibility to be accountable for the social damage caused by its platforms. Yet, during the Delhi Legislative Assembly’s proceedings in 2021, where the chair of the Peace and Harmony Committee asked Facebook India about the steps taken to curb hate speech propagated on its platform and address user’s complaints about the content posted (read more...)

Comparing Worlds through Social Media

 Jordan Kraemer  April 5, 2016

Nine field sites, nine ethnographers, eleven books: not exactly the setup for a conventional anthropological study. But for Daniel Miller and a team of eight other anthropologists in the Global Social Media Impact study at University College London (now online as Why We Post), this ambitious, comparative model was necessary to understand emerging social media practices across the world, or at least, in many different places, and extends what anthropological ethnography can be. As Miller explained in a 2012 post on this blog (when the fieldwork was still underway), the shared features of social media platforms (from Facebook and Twitter to China’s QQ) make it possible to ask what social media are: a new means of communication? Longtime social practices in a new setting? An emergent form of social connection? So a study that looks at this simultaneously in eight sites works particularly for something that has been introduced across the whole world within a very short time period. All this would at least suggest that a comparative study can actually deepen rather than take away from each individual ethnography. (read more...)