The 2018 Facebook Data Controversy and Technological Alienation

Author(s):  
Ananda Mitra ◽  
Yasmine Khosrowshahi

The controversy surrounding the way in which data was obtained and used by a private corporation, Cambridge Analytica, in connection with the US Presidential election of 2016 begs a series of questions and points to the critical connection between big data and a variety of fundamental human imperatives such as privacy and freedom of expression amongst others. This chapter uses the issues surrounding the controversy as a point of departure to explore two related issues – first the way in which the “technologically alienated” individual makes technological decisions without being mindful of the consequences of the technological choices and secondly the way in which the alienation can be utilized to obtain detailed information from the structured and unstructured data that makes up the gigantic corpus of big data.

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 529-542 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keshab Bhattarai ◽  
Paul Bachman ◽  
Frank Conte ◽  
Jonathan Haughton ◽  
Michael Head ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
pp. 174276652110399
Author(s):  
Jane O’Boyle ◽  
Carol J Pardun

A manual content analysis compares 6019 Twitter comments from six countries during the 2016 US presidential election. Twitter comments were positive about Trump and negative about Clinton in Russia, the US and also in India and China. In the UK and Brazil, Twitter comments were largely negative about both candidates. Twitter sources for Clinton comments were more frequently from journalists and news companies, and still more negative than positive in tone. Topics on Twitter varied from those in mainstream news media. This foundational study expands communications research on social media, as well as political communications and international distinctions.


2019 ◽  
pp. 228-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H. Dutton ◽  
Bianca C. Reisdorf ◽  
Grant Blank ◽  
Elizabeth Dubois ◽  
Laleah Fernandez

Concern over filter bubbles, echo chambers, and misinformation on the Internet are not new. However, as noted by Howard and Bradshaw (Chapter 12), events around the 2016 US presidential election and the UK’s Brexit referendum brought these concerns up again to near-panic levels, raising questions about the political implications of the algorithms that drive search engines and social media. To address these issues, the authors conducted an extensive survey of Internet users in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the US, asking respondents how they use search, social media, and other media for getting information about politics, and what difference these media have made for them. Their findings demonstrate that search is one among many media gateways and outlets deployed by those interested in politics, and that Internet users with an interest in politics and search skills are unlikely to be trapped in a filter bubble, or cocooned in a political echo chamber.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrice Barthélémy ◽  
Mathieu Martin ◽  
Ashley Piggins

ABSTRACTDonald J. Trump won the 2016 US presidential election with fewer popular votes than Hillary R. Clinton. This is the fourth time this has happened, the others being 1876, 1888, and 2000. In earlier work, we analyzed these elections (and others) and showed how the electoral winner can often depend on the size of the US House of Representatives. This work was inspired by Neubauer and Zeitlin (2003, 721–5) in their paper, “Outcomes of Presidential Elections and the House Size.” A sufficiently larger House would have given electoral victories to the popular vote winner in both 1876 and 2000. An exception is the election of 1888. We show that Trump’s victory in 2016 is like Harrison’s in 1888 and unlike Hayes’s in 1876 and Bush’s in 2000. This article updates our previous work to include the 2016 election. It also draws attention to some of the anomalous behavior that can arise under the Electoral College.


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