Cultural Capital in the Digital Age. The YouTuber Online Persona

In this essay, we will examine if and how Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory can be applied to the YouTuber online persona and if any significant alterations could point towards the consideration of a new form of capital – digital capital. We will also be looking at how a YouTuber persona and its capital can be transferred and used in different environments and situations. We aim to examine how one’s online persona is becoming just as, if not more important than one’s real-life actions, managing to overcome punitive measures (inauthenticity aversion) usually applied to inauthentic forms of capital. We will take into account how the embodied, objectified, and institutionalized cultural capital can be found in YouTuber personas, but are being altered by the online environment, by exposure, by the algorithms used by the platform, by ‘internet history’. With the help of these alterations, the forms of capital associated with the online persona – in this case the YouTuber persona – have transcended the classic definitions of cultural capital. These developments can be analyzed and further explored in several fields, such as personal branding.

The ARPANET Into the Internet: A Tale of Two Networks

The Internet is a split civilian and military entity in physical and social construction. Investigating this split entity in all its manifestations is an important venture, but this study explores the split social construction of the ARPANET’s reported history. ARPANET/Internet literature shows a division between literature that does and does not include the history of the intelligence communities (IC) working relationship with the pre-privatized ARPANET. Two different genres of literature are discussed, charted in a Table and compared to aspects of the ARPANET’s known and reported developmental and privatization history. Different origin stories are discussed in a general way; then a pattern in the literature is explored, namely, how illegally and libelous spy data gathered in 1960s intelligence community (IC) operations and processed through the pre-privatized ARPANET, is acknowledged in indirect or secondhand ways, when ARPA demonstrated feasibility of the ARPANET ; while after pyritization the literature acknowledges IC spying through the commercialized Internet in firsthand and direct ways. The study examines how earlier and contemporary literature continues contesting the role that 1960s IC spy data played in demonstrating the feasibility of the ARPANET; a prerequisite test for the privatization of the ARPANET. Findings indicate ARPANET histories have excluded direct reporting about how ARPA and the IC demonstrated ARPANET’s feasibility prior to privatization. The conclusion is that understanding history about how ARPA and the IC demonstrated ARPANET’s feasibility, makes it easier to comprehend reports about how the Internet serves counterinsurgency purposes. The study confirms ongoing debates about the social construction of Internet history.

Smart Devices in Airbnbs: Considering Privacy and Security for both Guests and Hosts

Consumer smart home devices are becoming increasingly pervasive. As Airbnb hosts deploy smart devices in spaces shared with guests, we seek to understand the security and privacy implications of these devices for both hosts and guests. We conducted a large-scale survey of 82 hosts and 554 guests to explore their current technology practices, their preferences for smart devices and data collection/sharing, and their privacy and security concerns in the context of Airbnbs. We found that guests preferred smart devices, even viewed them as a luxury, but some guests were concerned that smart devices enable excessive monitoring and control, which could lead to repercussions from hosts (e.g., locked thermostat). On average, the views of guests and hosts on data collection in Airbnb were aligned, but for the data types where differences occur, serious privacy violations might happen. For example, 90% of our guest participants did not want to share their Internet history with hosts, but one in five hosts wanted access to that information. Overall, our findings surface tensions between hosts and guests around the use of smart devices and in-home data collection. We synthesize recommendations to address the surfaced tensions and identify broader research challenges.

The Kardashian Moment: Hashtag, Selfie and the Broken Internet

The article focuses on a hashtags as a tool of networked culture and networked social movements, and – at the same time – on self-expression phenomenon of a selfie. Although today hashtags, in particular, can been seen as a frequently used weapon in information wars and a tool of propaganda 2.0, seen from historical perspective, this very tool aligns itself first and foremost with emancipatory forces in the Internet history. These forces, expressed in A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace and in participatory ideals of Web 2.0 are now in withdrawal. As the Internet is now in a peculiar development phase, ruled by the logic of surveillance capitalism, those early ideals of free speech and exchange of ideas are now overshadowed by a “darkening of the digital dream (Shoshana Zuboff). The central argument suggests that the “Kardashian moment” on the one hand, and Occupy Wallstreet, on the other hand, constituted a point in time where new media affordances and social phenomena were aligned. At the same time, both hashtag and selfie can be viewed as a response to the betrayalof individualization processes started in the 1960s, then carried on and amplified by the early Internet, and in the end commodified by the growing Internet giants and established structures of power.