Monthly Archives: April 2012

Dans I Kathimerini (Grèce, 29 avril 2012)

Le quotidien I Kathimerini publie un compte rendu du colloque New Sensorium (Athènes, 20-21 avr. 2012) : l’occasion pour présenter au public grec les travaux du sociologue Antonio Casilli, auteur de Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité ? (Ed. du Seuil) et pour discuter la place de Marshall McLuhan dans le panorama actuel des digital humanities.

Ανάμεσα σε άλλα, ο κοινωνιολόγος του Paristech, Antonio Casilli, μίλησε για την ενσώματη κοινωνικότητα στο Διαδίκτυο, μέσω των αναπαραστάσεων των άβαταρ και την ιική μετάδοση πληροφοριών (viral) μεταδίδοντας την ομιλία του ταυτόχρονα στο Twitter και το Ustream και ενσωματώνοντας τις αντιδράσεις των χρηστών που τον παρακολουθούσαν online, ενώ άλλοι ομιλητές επεκτάθηκαν ώς τον Stelarc και την bioart, αναλύοντας πώς οι υπολογιστές ή το ανθρώπινο γενετικό υλικό μπορεί να συνιστούν πεδίο καλλιτεχνικής έκφρασης.

"Pro-ana censorship is ineffective and inefficient" : podcast d'Antonio Casilli sur CBC Radio (Canada, 26 avr. 2012)

Le sociologue Antonio Casilli, auteur de Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité ? (Ed. du Seuil) est l’invité de Jian Ghomeshi pour le magazine culturel Q, sur la chaîne nationale canadienne CBC Radio. Une discussion sur les conséquences négatives de la censure des contenus “pro-anorexiques” dans les médias sociaux.

Pour écouter le podcast : [audio:http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10267886/qpodcast_20120426_81083.mp3 |titles=CBC Radio Canada ‘Q with Jian Ghomeshi’ |artists=Antonio A. Casilli]

In my latest book 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.

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 post published on my 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!

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.

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.

(more…)

"Alan Turing : impardonnable ?" – podcast d'Antonio Casilli (France Culture, La Grande Table, 24 avr. 2012)

Podcast de La Grande Table, le magazine culturel de la mi-journée sur France Culture, consacré à la figure du mathématicien (et père de l’intelligence artificielle) Alan Turing, à l’occasion du centenaire de sa naissance. Pour en parler avec Raphaël Bourgois, Marc Weitzmann, Hervé Le Tellier et le sociologue Antonio Casilli, auteur de Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité ? (Ed. du Seuil).

Pour écouter d’autres podcast d’Antonio Casilli sur France Culture.

Alan Turing, l’« impardonnable » ? Pionnier de l’intelligence artificielle, père des ordinateurs numériques contemporains, mathématicien de génie, cryptanalyste capable de craquer les codes super-secrets de l’armée nazie, de son vivant Alan Turing est persécuté à cause de son homosexualité. Après son arrestation en 1952, il est obligé à un choix cornélien : la prison ou la castration chimique. Il choisit la deuxième option, mais n’arrivera pas à surmonter ce traumatisme. En 1954 il se donne la mort en croquant… une pomme empoisonnée.

Les circonstances de son décès redeviennent d’actualité aujourd’hui. Alors que les célébrations pour le centenaire de sa naissance s’enchaînent partout dans le monde (v. le grand colloque à l’ENS de Lyon début juillet), en Angleterre une polémique autour de l’opportunité politique d’accorder officiellement le pardon à ce génie de l’informatique oppose les 21 000 signataires d’une pétition présentée au gouvernement britannique et la Chambre des Lords, officiellement contraire à cette mesure.

Pourtant les raisons pour accorder ce pardon sont évidentes : les travaux d’Alan Turing ont eu une influence remarquable sur les mathématiques, mais aussi dans des domaines fort éloignés tels la biologie, la philosophie et les sciences de l’ingénieur. Alors pourquoi, après toutes ces années, Turing est encore “impardonnable” ? Non pas à cause de sa sexualité, même si la question du traitement des “déviants sexuels” enflamme encore l’opinion publique britannique.

Peut-être cet acharnement doit être imputé moins à sa vie privée qu’à son héritage scientifique. Pour sa transdisciplinarité, pour sa puissance visionnaire, le travail de Turing soulève des questions imposantes, auxquelles nous n’avons pas encore trouvé une réponse. La possibilité même de l’intelligence artificielle ne cesse de provoquer de débats passionnés au sein de la communauté scientifique. Si la pensée est un processus simulable, qu’en est-il de la spécificité de la pensée humaine ?

Sans parler de l’hypothèse de la Singularité (la confluence d’hommes et machines en une superintelligence), autour de laquelle les géants des nouvelles technologies créent des initiatives spectaculaires (v. la Singularity University de Google) et que Turing avait préfiguré en 1950, avec le célèbre Test qui porte son nom : une épreuve pour évaluer la capacité des machines à se faire passer pour des êtres humains.

Selon le scientifique anglais les ordinateurs numériques auraient été capables de passer son test avant la date symbolique de l’année 2000. Pour la petite histoire, à l’occasion de l’édition 2000 du Loebner Prize in Artificial Intelligence, aucun des logiciels en lice n’est arrivé à tromper les juges. De ce point de vue-là, la prophétie de Turing ne s’est réalisée… Est-ce aussi pour cela qu’il demeure “impardonnable” ?

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).

http://entopia.org/newsensorium/

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.

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.

Banning pro-ana websites? Not a good idea, as Web censorship might have a 'toothpaste tube effect'

[Update 05.04.13: A longer version of this post, with revised results, has evolved into a full-fledged article published by the UK Royal Society. To cite the article: A. A. Casilli, F. Pailler, P. Tubaro (2013). Online networks of eating disorder websites: why censoring pro ana might be a bad idea, Perspectives in Public Health , vol. 133, n.2, p. 94 95. As part of our research project ANAMIA (Ana-mia Sociability: an Online/Offline Social Networks Approach to Eating Disorders), the post has been featured in a number of media venues, including The Economist, Libération, Le Monde, Boing Boing, The Huffingtonpost, CBC Radio Canada, DRadio Wissen, Voice of Russia.]

Tumblr, Pinterest and the toothpaste tube

On February 23rd, 2012 Tumblr announced its decision to turn the screw on self-harm blogs: suicide, mutilation and most prominently thinspiration – i.e. the ritualized exchange of images and quotes meant to inspire readers to be thin. This cultural practice is distinctive of the pro-ana (anorexia nervosa), pro-mia (bulimia) and pro-ED (eating disorders) groups online: blogs, forums, and communities created by people suffering from eating-related conditions, who display a proactive stance and critically abide by medical advice.

A righteous limitation of harmful contents or just another way to avoid liability by marginalizing a stigmatized subculture? Whatever your opinion, it might not come as a surprise that the disbanded pro-ana Tumblr bloggers are regrouping elsewhere. Of all places, they are surfacing on Pinterest, the up-and-coming photo-sharing site. Here’s how Sociology in Focus relates the news: (more…)