Digital Humanities - Bocconi 2016 - Luca De Biase

Platform“We need

diversity of thought in the world to face the new challanges”.

Tim Berners-Lee

Are we better informed in the info-sphere?

Are we better informed in the info-sphere?

❖ There are more opportunities for getting informed

❖ There are maybe too many opportunities for getting information

❖ We can be better informed only if we are aware of the way platforms work

What is a platform and how does it affect our relationships

❖ Information overload is a failure of filters. How do platforms help us deal with it and what are the algorithms that they use? What are the consequences of those algorithms? Do you know about the Facebook experiment?

❖ Eli Pariser, The filter bubble, 2011

❖ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/12/books/review/book-review-the-filter-bubble-by-eli-pariser.html?_r=0

❖ http://www.forbes.com/sites/dailymuse/2014/08/04/the-facebook-experiment-what-it-means-for-you/

Facebook’s experiment

We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional

contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/24/8788.full

“Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks”

❖ A study by Gregory Trevors and other shows why it is so difficult to convince people with facts. It shows that if facts oppose people’s beliefs, which are part of their identity, then facts are rejected. If facts bear out people’s sense of identity then they are taken into account

❖ Why is it so hard to persuade people with facts?

❖ http://digest.bps.org.uk/2016/02/why-is-it-so-hard-to-persuade-people.html.

❖ Robert Epstein and others show how the success of Google - and Facebook - is building a new manipulating information system. Responses by the search engine are able to change the perception of reality and thus user beliefs when they are unaware of any distorting effects that the engine can hold. It must be said that users are almost always uncritical towards the results offered by Google, and consider it essentially objective.

❖ Robert Epstein’s article is worth reading: The new mind control; The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do

❖ https://aeon.co/essays/how-the-internet-flips-elections-and-alters-our-thoughts

Reason is minority

Digital and traditional media

❖ What’s so different in the digital media environment? Time, attention, authority are the new competitive dimensions. While our learning, memorizing and connecting strategies change quite a lot. But we now have to deal with information overload and some other problems. This is not the end of media evolution.

❖ Luca De Biase, Cambiare pagina, Rizzoli, 2011

❖ https://edge.org/conversation/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable

❖ http://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/jan/05/clay-shirky-future-newspapers-digital-media

Economy of digital media

❖ Scarcity was: space, memory, processing

❖ Scarcity is: time, attention, relevance

❖ Scarcity shifts: from supply to demand

Public dimension

❖ The medium blurs in the info-sphere

❖ Algorithms and interfaces manage information influencing the narrative

❖ Bubbles and tribes emerge

❖ Common dimension gets smaller, public space gets privatized

To be part of the project of the platform is part of being innovative

Present platforms are not the end of history

❖ Facebook, Google, Apple have a history. And a strategy. But they also have competitors. How does a platform get traction and success? How a newcomer can get a success, too? What is the network-effects and how can we deal with it?

❖ B.J. Fogg, Persuasive technology, 2003

B.J. Fogg’s model

Technologiescan be persuasive

B.J. Fogg’s model

Ecology of media: a plurality of mutations

❖ Infinite mutations are needed for a rich media ecosystem to flourish. A sort of new consciousness is needed to escape the danger of being trapped in a platform without making the most of it.

❖ Lev Manovich, The language of New Media, Mit, 2001

❖ Luca De Biase, Homo pluralis, Codice 2015

❖ Aaron Balick, The psychodynamics of social networking, Karnac 2014