La première séance de mon séminaire EHESS Étudier les cultures du numérique : approches théoriques et empiriques pour cette année universitaire a eu lieu le mardi 20 novembre 2012 à l’EHESS. Merci à tou(te)s les participant(e)s pour leur présence, leurs commentaires et leur enthousiasme. Voilà les slides de ma présentation.
TITRE : “Contre l’hypothèse de la ‘fin de la vie privée’ sur les médias sociaux : négociabilité et cyclicité de la privacy”
RESUME : “Au sein de la communauté internationale plusieurs voix se lèvent pour dénoncer l’érosion inexorable de la vie privée dans le contexte des usages actuels du Web social. En s’adonnant à une surveillance mutuelle et participative, les internautes renoncent-ils volontairement à la protection de leurs données personnelles ? Cette intervention adopte une approche ethno-computationnelle des controverses relatives aux politiques de négociation des paramètres de confidentialité en ligne pour montrer que la vie privée a encore de beaux jours devant elle. Sous certaines conditions, des « cycles de privacy » se mettent en place. Au travers du travail des associations d’usagers et des organismes préposés à la défense de leurs droits, ces conditions peuvent être remplies.”
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.
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).
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. (more…)
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).
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.
So, here we are in the (intermittently) sunny state of California for Sunbelt XXXII, the International Network for Social Network Analysis (INSNA) annual conference. This year the venue is Redondo Beach and the highlights are both old and new stars of social network analysis: David Krackhardt, Tom Valente, Barry Wellman, Emmanuel Lazega, Anuška Ferligoj, Ron Burt, Bernie Hogan, Carter Butts, Christina Prell, etc.
Here are our presentations, both delivered on Sunday 18th, March 2012.
Small data vs. Big data : comment mener des expériences dans les médias sociaux
L’explosion récente des « Big data » (traitement automatique d’énormes bases de données natives du Web) a été saluée par les chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales comme une véritable révolution. Néanmoins, certaines voix se lèvent pour dénoncer les limites épistémologiques, méthodologiques, et éthiques de cette approche. La méthode ethno-computationnelle développée par Tubaro & Casilli (2010) permet de dépasser ces limites en ayant recours à des petits jeux de données qualitatives (small data) utilisés pour calibrer des simulations multi-agents. Loin de produire des « prophéties », cette approches permet de mener des expériences in silico dans des situations d’information imparfaite et asymétrique. Deux études récentes (l’une relative aux effets de la censure des médias sociaux géolocalisés dans des situations de violence civile, l’autre sur la diversité culturelle sur Facebook) illustreront cette démarche.
As a young boy, I was familiar with the books and movies of the Italian pop-philosopher Luciano De Crescenzo. “The question mark”, was one of his favourite quotes, “is the symbol of good. The exclamation mark, the symbol of evil. When you meet someone who has doubts, you can take it easy. That means he’s a good person, someone broad-minded and tolerant… But if you meet someone who is overconfident, someone of unshakable faith – you should be afraid.” (Here is how it sounds in Italian, in this excerpt from his 1984 film Thus spake Bellavista).
A couple of recently published articles seem to make the same point – but in a more formal way. The first one has been published in Scienceon December 16th, 2011. Based on observations of animal behaviour (I know, I know… but bear with me please), the authors emit the educated guess that, within a human group, less-informed individuals are able to balance overly polarized political views.
Couzin, I., Ioannou, C., Demirel, G., Gross, T., Torney, C., Hartnett, A., Conradt, L., Levin, S., & Leonard, N. (2011). Uninformed Individuals Promote Democratic Consensus in Animal Groups Science, 334 (6062), 1578-1580 DOI: 10.1126/science.1210280
During the last week several voices of the international blogosphere have been discussing our study on the impact of social media censorship during the August 2011 UK Riots. As you know if you have been reading our blogs, our work was based on computational methods and aimed at showing possible scenarios of civil violence. We were adamant about the fact that our intention is to provide policy-making tools and a theoretical framework, while data collection about the riots and their possible social determinants is pending.
The hunger for data produces spurious correlations
A few of our readers have been particularly concerned with the fact that, for the time being, evidence is lacking. A particularly virulent one dismissed, in the comments section of a US blog reviewing our research, our results as unsubstantiated “opinions cloaked in technology”. In the current climate of ideological polarization, such attacks are to be considered – albeit epistemologically enticing – politically motivated. As is some of the “swift evidence” the Internet is regurgitating these days.
Exhibit A: the HumStats Blog, sprung from nothing on August 15th 2011, with only one post suggestively titled ‘2011 England Riots: Statistics of Ethnicity’: a lengthy statistical tirade highlighting a “strong correlation” between the occurrence of riots and black population (unemployed black population, to be precise) while discarding other socio-economic status indicators as not significant. (The blogger’s profile ‘HumStats’ is frugal to say the least. All we know is that this person is somehow statistics-savvy, but we have no indication as to the blogger’s gender or ethnic background).
Now, this kind of exercises in descriptive statistics is simple to grasp for everyone. Just having a look at summaries such as this one, taken from the blog post in question, an inexperienced reader might be drawn to think that the correlation is there, and – as in many a mind correlation implies causation – bang!… the Black and Afro-Caribbean population of England is automatically to blame for the recent wave of civil violence. What’s more, class conflict is nothing and, apparently, matters of social justice count for peanuts.
Les émeutes qui ont ébranlé la Grande-Bretagne ces derniers jours ont eu pour effet de provoquer une véritable “chasse aux sociologues”. Suite aux déclarations du maire de Londres Boris Johnson, l’amalgame entre tentatives de comprendre ces soulèvements et machinations pour les justifier s’est désormais imposé. La lettre ouverte du président de la British Sociological Association au quotidien The Guardian n’a pas renversé cette tendance : un climat de panique morale est bel et bien là.
Le billet de blog Is a social media-fuelled uprising the worst case scenario? Elements for a sociology of UK riots, co-écrit par Paola Tubaro et moi-même, n’a rien arrangé à l’affaire non plus. En nous appuyant sur des outils analytiques issus des SHS, nous démontrons que la censure sur Facebook, Twitter et BBM proposée par le Premier ministre britannique David Cameron aura comme conséquence une augmentation du niveau de violence.
Il s’agit d’un exemple de just-in-time sociology pour aider la prise de décision publique dans un moment historique où les libertés démocratiques sont prêtes à être sacrifiées en échange d’un sens de sécurité illusoire. Le texte a suscité beaucoup d’intérêt et de réactions positives ces derniers jours. De milliers de lecteurs, l’ont partagé en ligne et tweeté. Ceci est, dans notre cas, un franc succès : en dehors du monde universitaire, les lecteurs ne sont – paraît-il – que rarement intéressés par un essai de 15.000 signes contenant un apparat assez lourd de graphes, tableaux et un code de logiciel complet… Nos blogs sont des outils d’accompagnement à la recherche, visant surtout un public de spécialistes. Mais enfin, ce bon résultat nous confirme que, malgré les efforts de l’establishment britannique d’instiller une véritable “haine de la sociologie”, l’opinion publique a soif de comprendre les mécanismes sociaux à l’œuvre dans la situation actuelle.
Very happy to put online our powerpoint presentation – just delivered at Sunbelt international conference, world’s biggest conference on social network analysis. Thank you to Ilan Talmud (who chaired our session), to the colleagues, to FB “friends” and to tweeps attending. Great feedback from the room, from Twitter, and even had Barry Wellman blowing a kiss when I mentioned his “little boxes”…
