[Air-L] Reading list on (media) politics of visibility/invisibility

Fri Sep 9 00:03:57 PDT 2016

Hi Daniel (and others),

Great topic. I agree with many of the pieces mentioned.
Especially Brighenti as a good foundational paper. With the risk of being
overly self-promoting, I though you might perhaps also be interested in
some of the following work, we have done on the topic in TANTLab:

1) Madsen (2015). Tracing Data -Paying Attention: Interpreting digital
methods through valuation studies and Gibson's theory of perception, In
Making Things Valuable (link:
https://www.academia.edu/19768480/_Tracing_Data_Paying_Attention_-_Interpreting_digital_methods_through_valuation_studies_and_Gibson_s_theory_of_perception
)

--> This paper would fall under visibility as it discusses how, for
instance, the UN has been experimenting with Twitter as a source for making
crisis-signals visible. Based on readings of pragmatist theories about
perception, the paper discusses what it means to see the world through such
digital methods. This argument is further developed in my PhD entitled
'Web-visions - repurposing digital traces to organize social attention.

2) Birkbak & Carlsen (2016). The world of edge rank: Rhetorical
justifications of face books news feed algorithm.

--> Would fall under invisibility as it addresses the algorithm layer of
Facebook and the way this backbone is justified

3) Flyverbom & Madsen (2015). Sorting Data Out. (link:
https://www.academia.edu/19768604/Sorting_Data_Out_-_unpacking_big_data_value_chains_and_algorithmic_knowledge_production
)

--> A paper trying to unpack the production of big data revolves around
multiple processes of sourcing, organizing and visualizing. It tried to
tries to make a typologi of the social practices involved in making things
visible though big data.

Hope it is of any help,

Anders

2016-09-08 14:02 GMT+02:00 Steffen Albrecht <steffen.albrecht at berlin.de>:

> Dear Daniel,
>
> Though it's been published some years ago, I'd highly recommend
>
> Brighenti, Andrea (2007): Visibility. A category for the social sciences.
> In: Current Sociology 55(3), pp. 323-342
>
> with regard to the category
>
> ..."classical" approaches and authors that do NOT explicitly talk about
> today's political (social) media contexts, but which you would consider
> highly applicable to understand such phenomena.
>
> Best,
> Steffen
>
> ----- ursprüngliche Nachricht ---------
>
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] Reading list on (media) politics of
> visibility/invisibility
> Date: Do 08 Sep 2016 13:09:34 CEST
> From: Ansgar Koene<Ansgar.Koene at nottingham.ac.uk>
> To: Daniel Kunzelmann<kunzelmann.daniel at yahoo.de>,
> air-l at listserv.aoir.org<air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
>
> Hi Daniel,
>    sounds like a really interesting topic to assemble a reading list for.
> One article I recently read that could fit in the invisible category,
> under 'influence of algorithms' would be
> Zeynep Tufekci, “Algorithmic Harms beyond Facebook and Google: Emergent
> Challenges of Computational Agency”, J. on Telecomm. & High Tech. L., 203,
> 2015
>
> Cheers,
> Ansgar
>
> Dr. Ansgar Koene
> Senior Research Fellow: Horizon Policy Impact, CaSMa & UnBias
> Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute
> University of Nottingham
> http://casma.wp.horizon.ac.uk/
> http://unbias.wp.horizon.ac.uk/
> http://www.horizon.ac.uk/
> https://sites.google.com/site/arkoene/
>
> ________________________________________
> From: Air-L [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] on behalf of Daniel
> Kunzelmann [kunzelmann.daniel at yahoo.de]
> Sent: 08 September 2016 10:55
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-L] Reading list on (media) politics of
> visibility/invisibility
>
> Dear all,
>
> I felt like starting another list of literature :) Here is the
> question/thesis at stake: We live in a hyper-mediated world, in which
> the *speed and sheer amount of media posts *(Facebook, your favorite
> newspapers, Twitter, blogs, you name it...) suggest that political
> impact, relevance and importance is connected to "being visible" or
> "making something visible". Vice versa, *if something is **not
> visible**in today's social-media-democracy it does not exist, thus has
> no meaning, thus has no political power/impact/relevance**.*
>
> Yet, I feel - and so far it's only really a feeling - that *these
> invisible spaces and actions enable, generate and allocate as much
> political power as their visible twins.* Against the backdrop of
> "social-media-everywhere" and the *dominant daily narrative of the
> visible* (which we all experience when we look at our smartphone), I'm
> now looking for *authors and concepts that explore/reflect/challenge/*
>
> - that either the *politics of the visible*
> - or the *politics of the invisible*
> - or even the *relationship between visibility and invisibility* with
> regards to political power.
>
> It might be *authors and concepts that already reflect on today's
> (hyper) social media worlds**, as well as "classical" approaches on
> visibility/invisibility of power.* To give you two examples:
>
> Thinking about today's social media, we could have a closer look at the
> power of images (e.g. a meme) on our interfaces (visible) or at the
> algorithmic structures that sort and "deliver" these images (invisible).
> Both layers of power are real, in the sense that they affect us in our
> daily live, but one is visible and one is invisible. And of course, they
> are certainly connected.
>
> Same goes for something that existed before social media, let's say
> party politics. There have always been official press releases and
> interviews about how well e.g. a party congress went and what wonderful
> values this party now stands for (transparency, inclusion, etc.), but at
> the same time, at the congress in question, there also existed back-room
> meetings and private phone calls to influence internal party currents
> (opacity, exclusion, etc.). Again, both spaces and actions are real, in
> the sense that they have power effects on the party's members and/or
> possible voters, but one (media) space is visible and the other one
> invisible. And, here too, both layers work together perfectly.
>
> So, anyone wants to share their must-read with me?
>
> *...on "new" Cultural and Social Anthropological approaches and authors
> that already reflect on the politics of visibility/invisibility against
> today's backdrop of "social-media-everywhere". **
> **
> **...and/or "classical" ***approaches and authors* that do NOT
> explicitly talk about today's political (social) media contexts, but
> which you would consider highly applicable to understand such phenomena.
>
> *Either directly drop your recommendations in here:
> *https://danielderkunzelmann.piratenpad.de/airl-mediaoverload-politics-
> visibility-invisibility*
> or reply to this message via the list or a pm :)*
> *
> Of course, when the literature list is done, I will be sharing it with
> all of you!
>
> kind regards,
> Daniel
>
> *Daniel Kunzelmann,
> Ph.D.c / Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich / Institute of Cultural
> Anthropology/European Ethnology
> twitter       @der_kunzelmann <https://twitter.com/der_kunzelmann>
> blog            http://transformations-blog.com/daniel-kunzelmann/
> web            http://unibas.academia.edu/DanielKunzelmann
> linkedin     https://www.linkedin.com/pub/daniel-kunzelmann/7b/426/9a5*
>
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