Interactive map of the #EuropeanSpring

Not everyone loves the EU Spring Summit (13 and 14 March 2013). Some of those who don’t, wanna to march and protest. The police in Brussels wanna stop it. You know, same old same old… Here is an interactive map of all the protests happening around Europe to voice dissent against EU austerity policies.

Actions | For a European Spring

mars 11, 2013 | Filed Under space | Leave a Comment

[Slides] “Internet : un monde migrant” – Séminaire EHESS de D. Diminescu & S. Marchandise (19 févr. 2013)

Pour la quatrième séance de mon séminaire EHESS Étudier les cultures du numérique : approches théoriques et empiriques (19 février 2013) nous avons eu le plaisir d’accueillir Dana Diminescu (Télécom ParisTech et FMSH) et Sabrina Marchandise (Université Paul Valéry – Montpellier III) pour une intervention sur l’impact des TIC sur les modes de vie et les sociabilités des migrants internationaux.

Voilà les slides de l’intervention de Sabrina Marchandise, sur comment les étudiants en mobilité internationale se servent de Facebook pour gérer leurs cercles de connaissances, entre les pays d’origine et les pays d’accueil.

février 8, 2013 | Filed Under digital humanities, social capital, social networks, space | Leave a Comment

[Slides] « Machines à scandale : sociologie morale des bases de données » (séminaire EHESS E. Dagiral et S. Parasie 15 janv. 2013)

Pour la troisième séance de mon séminaire EHESS Étudier les cultures du numérique : approches théoriques et empiriques, (15 janvier 2013) nous avons eu le plaisir d’accueillir Éric Dagiral, maître de conférences à l’Université Paris Descartes, et Sylvain Parasie, maître de conférences à l’Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, pour une séance consacrée au journalisme de données et à ses enjeux démocratiques. Voilà les slides de leur présentation :

janvier 9, 2013 | Filed Under digital humanities, space | Leave a Comment

Censorship and social media: some background information

[Update July 27, 2012: so far, our study has been featured in a number of media outlets in UK, India, Algeria, US, Oman, Indonesia... These are just the ones we know of: The Daily Mail, Yahoo Lifestyle, CNN, Technorati, The Times of India, GigaOM, Buzzfeed, National Affairs, Sify News, Phys.org, Science Daily, Zee News TV India, Oman Tribune, The Free Library, L'atelier, Sciencenewsline, Le Soir d'Algérie, Tempo Indonesia. We're particularly impressed by this response, and would like to thank the researchers, journalists and activists who've been spreading the news.]

Hello everyone,

You have probably reached this page after reading in the international press about our study “Social Media Censorship in Times of Political Unrest – A Social Simulation Experiment with the UK Riots” (published in the journal Bulletin of Sociological Methodology, vol. 115, n. 1). This post will provide some background information.

Read the study

First of all, if you are interested in reading the paper, you can purchase the article from SAGE website. Anyhow, here’s a preprint version you can download for free. Just saying.

About the authors

If you are looking for the authors’ bios:

Antonio A. Casilli, is an associate professor of Digital Humanities at Telecom ParisTech and a researcher in sociology at the Edgar Morin Centre (EHESS), Paris, France. He is the author of the social media theory book Les liaisons numériques [Digital Relationships], published by the Editions du Seuil. He blogs at Bodyspacesociety.eu, tweets as @bodyspacesoc, and is a regular commentator for Radio France Culture. You can contact him here.

Paola Tubaro, is a senior lecturer in Economic Sociology at the Business School of the University of Greenwich, London, UK, and associate researcher at the Centre Maurice Halbwachs (CNRS) Paris, France. Economic sociologist with interest in social networks and their impact on markets, organisations, consumer choice and health, her research also includes work in the philosophy and methodology of economics and social science. Her blog is here, plus you can contact her here.

The story, so far

In the wake of the August 2011 UK uprisings, Casilli and Tubaro built a rapid response study. Using computer simulation, the investigators showed that any move by the government to censor social media was likely to result in more civil unrest, higher levels of violence, and shorter periods of social peace. Released as a joint post on their websites and subsequently available as a working paper on SSRN (Social Science Research Network), the study was widely shared online and in the press.

Such an enthusiastic response prompted them to continue their research. Presently, they are launching follow-ups and new developments, both empirical and theoretical, in other European and MENA countries. They are members of the scientific committee of Just-In-Time Sociology (JITSO), an EPFL Geneva-based program gathering international researchers that try “to understand social phenomena as they unfold”.

TEDx talk, simulations and other stuff

If you want to watch a video presentation of the study, here’s Antonio Casilli’s TEDx talk (in French, with English subtitles), “Studying censorship via social simulation”, TEDx Paris Universités, May 19, 2012.

If you want to know more about our ongoing research, Internet Censorship and Civil Unrest (ICCU), here’s the project’s wiki.

If you want to download the computer simulation, here you’ll find a detailed technical description of the model. The model file (Netlogo and Java applet versions) is available here . You should: 1) unzip and save all three files in the same directory; 2) either open the .nlogo file from your computer in Netlogo, or open the .html file in your browser).

Enjoy!

juillet 3, 2012 | Filed Under social networks, space | 1 Comment

La simulation sociale pour combattre la censure : texte de ma conférence à TEDxParisUniversités

[UPDATE 05.06.2102: La vidéo de mon talk est désormais en ligne sur le site Web des conférences TED. Enjoy & share !]

Le samedi 19 mai j’ai été parmi les heureux conférenciers de l’édition 2012 de TEDxParisUniversités. A cette occasion, j’ai pu présenter au public français les résultats du projet ICCU (Internet Censorship and Civil Unrest) que je mène avec Paola Tubaro, enseignante-chercheuse à l’Université de Greenwich, Londres. L’accueil a été plus que chaleureux : la tweeterie m’a porté en triomphe, j’ai reçu les accolades des organisateurs et je me suis imbibé de l’enthousiasme d’étudiants et de militants de tout bord. J’exagère, mais pas tant que ça (suffit de lire le compte-rendu Storify concocté par Gayané Adourian ;). Voici donc le texte et les slides de mon intervention, en attendant la vidéo.

Aujourd’hui je vais vous parler des effets négatifs de la censure des médias sociaux, en passant par le cas des émeutes britanniques de 2011.

La censure est extrêmement difficile à étudier du point de vue des sciences sociales. Dans la mesure où elle est une interruption de flux d’information, les données relatives à ses conséquences et à son efficacité prétendue sont souvent inaccessibles aux chercheurs. C’est pourquoi nous devons nous appuyer sur une méthode innovante : la simulation sociale. Read more

mai 20, 2012 | Filed Under digital humanities, social capital, social networks, space | Leave a Comment

Would online censorship be effective? Evidence from two research projects proves the opposite

Hi,
you’ve probably reached this blog after listening to my interview with Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio Canada’s programme Q. In case you missed it, here’s the podcast:

In this post, you’ll find some background information about my ongoing research on internet censorship – mainly in collaboration with Paola Tubaro (University of Greenwich, UK) and other colleagues. Our focus is on unintended and negative effects of censorship, based on analyses of social media use conducted in the last few years.

In my latest book Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité? [Digital Relationships. Towards a New Sociability?, Paris, Seuil, 2010] I dealt with the topic of pro-ana (short for “pro-anorexia”) and pro-mia (“pro-bulimia”) websites, blogs and forums of persons with eating disorders. The most controversial among them have gone as far as to claim that eating disorders are a choice or a lifestyle, rather than conditions. A grant from the French National Research Agency (ANR) allowed me and my colleagues to lauch ANAMIA, a large-scale study on eating disorder-oriented online communities.

ANAMIA research project – featured on Boing Boing

Since the early 2000s, fears that these websites may induce unhealthy behaviours (possibly in young and adolescent viewers), have prompted many web services to remove them, while some countries have considered outlawing them. Yet eating-disorder related Web communities continue to proliferate. They have migrated to more hidden platforms, barred entry to outsiders, concealed their true nature, and relocated in foreign countries. In a previous post published on Bodyspacesociety blog, I have dubbed this the “toothpaste tube effect“: squeezed from one service, controversial contents re-group elsewhere. Paradoxically, censorship multiplies these websites – if only because of the urge to duplicate contents for backup purposes, in case they have to shut down and move!

Mapping pro-ED websites (France, 2010-2012) – ANAMIA research project

Today, these websites are less open and less visible, though still numerous and densely connected with one another. Thus, they can still influence their users, just as before; but it has become harder for health and nutrition campaigns to locate them and reach out to their users.

Our results indicate that Internet censorship is ineffective and inefficient: it has failed to stop “negative” influences, and has made it more difficult for “positive” influences to operate.

avril 26, 2012 | Filed Under social capital, social networks, space | 2 Comments

Et in Athenis ego: update on ongoing research on the body + riots

I know I should be in Lyon for the www12 conference with all the Internet big shots, but instead I’m taking a plane and heading to Greece. The opportunity came via an invitation to deliver a speech at the New Sensorium, an international symposium that will take place on April 20-21 at the BIOS, in Athens. If you are around, you should definitely attend! The conference deals with some of my main research foci (digital technologies, media and the body) and it is the outcome of a collaboration between the Department of Communication, Media and Culture of Panteion University and the McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto (I was their guest a few months ago).

The New Sensorium symposium – BIOS, Athens (20-21 April 2012 )

Just so you know my speech carries the somewhat cryptic title The Virus and the Avatar. Ways of socializing the sensible in computer culture – and if you don’t have a clue of what it’s about, here are two texts in Greek and in English that might be of help.

But this Athens trip will also be the chance to do more than a bit of field research for our ongoing ICCU (Internet Censorship and Civil Unrest) project. You might remember the project was kickstarted by this blog post about last year’s UK riots.

http://owni.fr/2011/08/19/censure-reseaux-sociaux-londres-cameron-ukriots/

…also in French

Our research received a lot of attention and eventually became a working paper, then an article coming up in the Bulletin of Sociological Methodology and started a number of prospective spin-offs in other nations. The Athens one is based on the idea of studying media and internet use during the Greek 2010-12 protests (and the way they are linked with the 2008 riots). Won’t go into details because I don’t want to spoil the party. But, if I manage to grasp a little wifi, I might be blogging a postcard or two from my Athenian fieldwork.

avril 18, 2012 | Filed Under body, social networks, space | Leave a Comment

Is The Pirate Bay experimenting with drone datacenters?

By now you’ve already heard me speak about activist drones. This technology is no longer limited to the military. Occupy, Japanese environmentalists and Polish protestors have all been using quadricopters to document police brutality or environmental crimes. So the announcement posted earlier this week on the Pirate Bay blog doesn’t come as an absolute suprise: seems like they are experimenting with airborne Web hosting, launching small drones carrying internet mid-air servers to escape land-based censorship…

The Pirate Bay – The galaxy’s most resilient bittorrent site

Before you get all excited, let me tell you that my sources seem to indicate that this is a well-orchestrated joke. Apparently Low Orbit Server Stations (LOSS) is nothing but a theoretical belief. But for how long? Experiments with flying wi-fi hotspots are not unheard of in the hacker community, to say nothing about the working prototype of a file-sharing drone network presented last month by artist Liam Young. Just watch the movie here and think of the possibilities…

Electronic Countermeasures @ GLOW Festival NL 2011 from liam young on Vimeo.

mars 23, 2012 | Filed Under space | Leave a Comment

Le CNRS et l’Université Paris Descartes lancent une chaire “Liaisons numériques”

Dear all,

une chaire CNRS-Université Paris Descartes « sur la sociologie des liens sociaux ‘virtuels’ et sur les liaisons numériques » vient d’être créée.

Voilà la description du profil :

« La personne devra situer ses travaux dans la perspective des liens sociaux, et maîtriser les nouvelles techniques pour approcher les liens ‘virtuels’. Plus précisément elle doit reconnaître, sans négliger la force de certains processus de délitement social, la vigueur renouvelée des relations sociales, l’importance quotidienne et la force des liens relationnels. Elle doit revenir, avec le laboratoire, à la force de la préoccupation fondatrice de la sociologie afin d’interroger si, derrière ce qui est en apparence censé affaiblir le lien social, voire le détruire, sont ou non en action de nouvelles formes de sa production et de son renouvellement. Elle tiendra compte tout particulièrement des ‘liaisons numériques’ pour comprendre le renouvellement des formes du lien social. La chaire donne la possibilité à des maîtres de conférences d’être accueillis en délégation au CNRS pour y exercer une activité de recherche pendant 5 ans en bénéficiant d’une décharge de 2/3 de leur service d’enseignement, d’une prime d’excellence scientifique et d’un environnement scientifique approprié. »

La date limite d’envoi du dossier est le 7 mars 2012. Pour plus d’informations, suivre le lien vers « Galaxie », le portail des enseignants-chercheurs.

février 26, 2012 | Filed Under body, social capital, social networks, space | Leave a Comment

Slides séminaire de Jérôme Denis : Villes, infrastructures et #opendata (EHESS, 18 janv. 2012)

Dans le cadre de mon séminaire EHESS Étudier les cultures du numérique : approches théoriques et empiriques, j’ai eu le plaisir d’accueillir pour une séance sur ville, infrastructure et données Jérôme Denis, sociologue, enseignant-chercheur à Télécom ParisTech, auteur (avec David Pontille) de l’excellent Petite sociologie de la signalétique (Presses de l’Ecole des mines, 2010) et co-animateur du blog Scriptopolis. Voici les slides de son intervention.