Sociology Flashcards
Accumulation by dispossession
The harvesting of data about people, organizations, and things and their transformation into a form of capital is often described as a process of “accumulation by dispossession”. A loss of your rights that is supported by practices and legal violence
Accumulation by gift (the Maussian Bargain)
The ”unique regime” of accumulation by gift implies that the economic relation that develops as a result of a digital gift offering not only masks the structural asymmetry between giver and gifted but also permits the creation of the new commodity of personal data, obfuscates its true value, and naturalizes its private appropriation
The Maussian Bargain
Stands for the idea that gift-giving is not a simple act of generosity but involves a complex set of social expectations and obligations.It implies that when someone gives a gift, it creates a social bond and implies a reciprocal obligation for the recipient to give something in return. The act of giving, receiving, and reciprocating gifts establishes and maintains social relationships, creating a cycle of exchange that strengthens social ties. This concept emphasizes the social and symbolic dimensions of economic transactions.
Network effects
Refers to the idea that the value of a product or service increases as more people use it. In other words, the more users a network has, the more valuable it becomes to each individual user. Which can lead to a few dominant players having a significant share of the market
”Choice architecture”
When digital companies talk about this it refers to the way they set up options and defaults to guide your choices on their platform. Use techniques to make me share more personal info
Economic morality
Intentionally organizing ethical guidelines to efficiently collect data without spending too much money. A set of moral relations deliberately planned to replenish the data pipeline at the cheapest cost
Primitive accumulation in the digital economy
The appropriation of data about people, organizations, and things and their transformation into a form of capital
Digital capitalism
The economic system in which digital technologies play a central role in the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Digital capitalism involves the use of digital tools to create value, enhance efficiency, and drive economic growth. While digital capitalism offers opportunities for innovation and economic growth, it also raises concerns about issues like data privacy, inequality etc
Digital Economy
An economic system where digital technologies, primarily the internet and information & communication technologies, play a central role in economic activities. In the digital economy, the creation, distribution, and consumption of goods and services are heavily influenced by digital processes and technologies. While it enhances efficiency, innovation, and global connectivity, it also raises concerns about issues such as data privacy, cybersecurity, and the digital divide
Heteromation
Organic solidarity. Everyone (including users) do their part to fix the machine, making it even more precise and efficient
“Heteromated” labor
Everyone contributes to the big platforms by contributing with different forms of free labor
Digital society
The societal changes and transformations brought about by the widespread use and integration of digital technologies in various aspects of everyday life. In a digital society, digital data plays a central role, as it is collected, stored, and analyzed for various purposes
Network society
Positions networks as the basis for modern societies’ structures and power relations
Knowing capitalism
When information is a source of profit.
Megaplatforms
Internet empires sucha as Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple
Foucauldian Approach to power
Focuses on power relations that are based on both authority and those who are dispersed everyday and voluntary. It emphasizes that power operates through various modes of communication and surveillance, and it is not solely exercised by authoritative individuals or groups.
“Post-hegemonic power”
Via the newly digitized information economy, a type of “Post-hegemonic power” operates in increasingly subtle ways. Power becomes a natural part of life, but people might not notice it because it’s invisible and taken for granted.
Sociomaterial approach / the sociomaterial perspective
A theoretical perspective that emphasizes the interplay between social and material aspects of human life. Moves beyond a focus solely on social or cultural factors and recognizes the significance of material objects, technologies, and their interactions with human actors in shaping social relations & human experiences. That human and non-human actors shape each other.
Actor network theory
It emphasizes the role and agency of non-human actors in shaping human actors. It is often applied to understand how networks of actors shape the development and implementation of technologies, scientific knowledge, and social practice
The assemblage concept
It draws upon the actor network theory. Is a useful way of understanding the hybrid phenomena that form when human and non- human actors interact. It provides an approach to understanding the individual’s relationship to and use of digital technologies that emphasises that each actor, whether human or non- human, shapes the other in a mutually constitutive relationship
Digital data
Is a type of sociomaterial object. Digital data objects structure our concepts of identity, embodiment, relationships, our choices and preferences and even our access to services or spaces.
Prosumption / prosumers
Consumers are actively participating in the production of the goods/services that they consume. For e.g user-generated content, participating in crowdsourcing projects or engaging in co-creation of product/services. This has been enabled by technological advancements and changes in consumer behavior.
Social labour
The regular and continued use of for e.g social media demands a type of social labour, to adapt to the demands of these media and those with whom users interact
Spreadable media
Media produced digitally that circulate or ‘spread’ across multiple sites, platforms and cultures in messy and difficult to govern ways
Communicative capitalism
Corporations actively seek to monetize content sharing and circulation to achieve ‘virality’– and to direct this in ways that contribute financially to themselves but not to the creators of the content
Online archives
Where digital data / data is stored online. The internet is a living archive since it generates, stores, distributes and transmits data. Digital archives makes digital data searchable and distributable. The current global info economy depend on these processes
Surveillant assemblage
Employed to describe the ways in which digital data are used to create ‘data doubles’
Panoptic surveillance
The few watching the many. The panopticon is an exemplary prison in which a small number of prison guards watch a large number of prisoners from a central hidden position. The idea of this concept of watching is that because the prisoners are never able to tell when they are being watched, they learn to engage in self discipline, internalising the guards’ regulatory gaze. The use of CCTV cameras as a security measure relies on this to a certain extent
Ban-optic surveillance
(a variation of panoptic surveillance) employed to more specifically describe the use of data to ban or exclude certain individuals and social groups from particular regions, countries or public spaces, or from access to employment, social services, insurance and so on
Panspectric veillance
(also sometimes referred to as dataveillance). Refers to a broader range of digital technologies and uses of data. Developed in response to the concept on panopticon. Panopticon relies on human senses (mainly vision) while panspectron uses digital sensores and signles to create large data sets for veillance purposes
Algorithmic veillance
The algorithms used to make decisions and predictions about the value of some consumers compared with others, based on their digital consumption activities, or even in some cases about the threat they may pose to others (as in identifying potential terrorists, criminals or illegal immigrants). Algorithmic veillance is another form of veillance using digital technologies that has developed
Sousveillance
Involves citizens not only watching each other but also conducting surveillance of those in authority. With help of tech devices citizens can engage in citizen participation, citizen journalism etc
Synoptic veillance
Describes social and other forms of watching which involve the many watching the few. This takes place in relation to fandom cultures, for example, in which celebrities post content on social media that is viewed and followed by many others. It also occurs when material that individuals who are non- celebrities have uploaded to social media sites such as YouTube ‘goes viral’, or attracts many viewers or followers
Social surveillance
Employed to describe the interactive watching of each other that takes place on social media sites. Social surveillance may be viewed as one form of participatory veillance, which involves the voluntary engagement in watching or being watched by others
Participatory veillance
A feature of signing up to use social media platforms, when people consent to their data being collected
Dubbed uberveillance
This is a surveillance that often is participatory. It involves the integration of different surveillance technologies such as GPS and other sensor technologies to gather real-time information about individual’s activities, location or physiological state. For example tracking technologies that can be inserted within or worn upon the body.
Cyborg
It is a being that combines both biological and artificial components. In simpler terms, it’s a creature or person with both natural and technological parts, working together as a single system
Sociology
The study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior. Sociologists investigate the structure of groups, organizations, and societies and how people interact within these contexts
Power relations / power dynamics
Power structures refer to the fact that our digital economy and the platforms and apps within it contribute to hierarchical and asymmetrical relationships. Gift-giving mask these structural asymmetries
The modern capitalist system
An economic and social system characterized by private ownership of the means of production, market-driven competition, and profit-seeking as the primary motive for economic activity
Market exchange
The dominant form of exchange i capitalist system. If you buy something and you pay for it, you measure explicitly what the value is. The exchanged is finished right there, when the service/product is exchanged
Gift giving
The exchange is obfuscated (unclear), the value is not explicitly measured or estimated but debt remains. There is a obligation to give, receive and reciprocate. Giving gifts, empower the gift giver since a type of debt remains. There has to be a reciprocal exchange where the debt is settled by a counter-gift in the future
Open source communities
Sources who are open for everyone such as different crowd founding, free AI tools or Wikipedia.
Freemium models
Apps where there is a free version and a paid version
”Behavioural surplus”
Data produced by people, their labour, expertise, opinions, emotions is through the infrastructure of platforms used as an advertising market.
Surveillance capitalism
The idea that we spend a lot of time online at that all traces we leave are used
