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Self‐service technologies are widely used in business, and retailers and service firms invest significant resources to obtain and improve their Self‐Service Technology capabilities. To allocate resources efficiently, it is crucial for firms to predict Self‐Service Technology usage by their customers. However, predictors in the extant literature (e.g., customers' perceptions and personality traits) are not easy to objectively measure or obtain secondary data about. This research proposes and examines political ideology, for which fairly accurate and objective data can be obtained, as a novel predictor of customer Self‐Service Technology usage. In four studies in different contexts, the authors consistently find that political ideology is significantly related to customers' intention to use and actual use of Self‐Service Technologies; Liberals, on average, are found to be significantly more likely to use Self‐Service Technologies compared to conservatives. Moreover, process complexity is identified as a moderator of this effect. In addition, two mediators, customers' need for interaction and customers' perceived control, through which political ideology affects intention to use Self‐Service Technologies are uncovered. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of contributions and practical implications for managers and practitioners as well as avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Internet scholars are uncovering and connecting histories of early internets across the globe, but the Canadian context remains underexplored. Drawing on unpublished and declassified documents of the Canadian Armed Forces at Ottawa's Directorate of History and Heritage, this article investigates the history and significance of SAMSON (Strategic Automatic Message Switching Operational Network), an early Canadian internet that experienced a series of setbacks beginning almost immediately at its advent in 1965, until the project was completed in 1984. Analysis: Canada's internet infrastructural techno-politics are examined through Brian Larkin's framework of examining technical ways through which the political is constituted. Conclusions and implications: This paper shows how this early internet was a techno-political system that shaped and was shaped by Canada's pursuit of its national identity amid fears of U.S. influence and rising demands for self-determination within the Québécois and Indigenous nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In conversations surrounding technology and the future of politics, Adam Smith is a valuable resource for evaluating the subtle relationship between technology and freedom. Smith explores the tendency of specialization occasioned by the advancement of machines to cause "mental mutilation" where the worker's human faculties are stunted through overspecialization or narrowing of scope of opportunities to judge. Smith's treatment of the development of sympathetic judgment as necessary to the practice of liberty illuminates the depth of the harms caused by this mutilation; it is the very freedom of the worker that is at stake when the development and the exercise of judgment are restricted. Taken together, Smith's discussion of the advancement of machines and free and independent judgment can aid contemporary thinkers in understanding the relationship between technology and freedom in commercial society, particularly if new technologies substitute for the judgment of the worker or prevent the development of their judgment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go (2005), describes a society in which organ transplantation utilizing human clones is realized owing to technological advancement in the field of regenerative medicine. This paper, through considering the work as a dystopian novel with an ecological theme, explores the subject of the author's critique and what his ideal vision really was. In this novel, universal themes such as love, friendship, memory, and a view of life are foregrounded by means of a first-person narrative and backgrounded by a dystopian world view of cloning. In addition, criticism of consumerism and nuclear policy are embedded in the narrative of the story's protagonist, whose reluctant narration implies the ruined landscape of Nagasaki. This paper attempts to expose such themes, while at the same time it becomes clear that Ishiguro's ideal view of the world is an ecological one where people are satisfied with older analogue technologies and clean energy is promoted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article addresses the role of critical ethics in technological innovation processes, specifically in the context of the implementation of the Online Mobility platform in Medellin, Colombia. It highlights the persistence of mediations in digitalization processes, both inherited and new, that affect the relationship between citizens and access to government services. It proposes an ethics of technology that includes citizen participation in the design and creation of technological artifacts, with the aim of influencing the exercise of participatory citizenship in electronic governments. The article analyzes the case of the Online Mobility platform of the Traffic Secretariat of Medellin, Colombia, to understand how a new public space mediated by information and communication technologies is configured. It emphasizes that the relationship between citizens and the state in the digitalization of administrative services is completely mediated by various actors, such as private companies, public officials, and intermediaries. Three groups of transitions are mentioned in this process: the "liquidification" of administrative relationships, the transition to digital citizenship, and the reconfiguration of mediations. It is noted that these transitions redefine the relationships between the platform state and the citizen, generating complexities and challenges in state services. In addition, the need for interaction and human intermediation in the use of digital platforms is highlighted. Finally, the importance of building digital governance in this process of transition and transformation is mentioned. This article discusses the importance of digital ethics in the governance of technological developments. It suggests that digital ethics should guide technological developments in a way that allows citizens to shape strategies related to the use of digital technologies. However, it is noted that existing regulations can be a barrier to digital transformation, especially in electronic governments. The need to think about the ethics of design, implementation, and use of technologies, as well as the development of new forms of critical citizenship in relation to the use of new technologies, is emphasized. In addition, it is mentioned that the digitalization of administrative procedures can generate adaptive differences among citizens, highlighting the importance of including citizens' practices in relationship processes with the state. The article analyzes citizen participation in digital transition processes and its relationship with government services. The importance of citizens' critical participation and their ability to adapt or evade prescribed models is highlighted. The influence of regulations on the dematerialization of procedures and the transformation of public space is mentioned. In addition, the impact of technology on social interactions and people's daily lives is discussed. Finally, the role of technological artifacts in the moral analysis of communication technologies is reflected upon. According to Verbeek's philosophical perspective, technological artifacts are not neutral but morally relevant, as they have a sense of agency and participate in our perceptions and actions. Technological artifacts are morally relevant because they create new options for possible actions and affect the way we relate to the world. Ethics plays a critical role in the use of technologies, and it is important to ethically accompany technological innovation. Citizens can intervene in design processes and make decisions regarding the development of technological artifacts. In digital transitions, multiple mediations occur that affect administrative relationships, digital citizenship, and forms of intervention in administrative services. The article analyzes how the Online Mobility platform becomes an intermediary in the relationship between citizens and the state, especially during the pandemic. The platform digitalizes communication and administrative procedures, but also pl [Extracted from the article]

Rapid technological advancement is changing the way that political parties, voters, and media platforms engage with each other. This along with cultural change has led to an emerging era of disinformation and misinformation driven by both domestic and foreign actors. Political deepfakes, videos created through the use of artificial intelligence, allow individuals to rapidly create fake videos indistinguishable from true content. These videos have the capacity to undermine voter trust and could alter electoral outcomes. Regulating disinformation however raises significant free speech concerns, as well as questions about where liability should fall. In particular, holding large technology and media platforms accountable for content could lead to unintended chilling effects around freedom of expression, harming rather than protecting democratic institutions. Proposed regulations should therefore be carefully analysed through the framework of the implied freedom of political communication, ensuring that any new laws are proportionate and tailored to the threat they seek to prevent. This article analyses how current Australian law interacts with political deepfakes and proposes two targeted amendments to our federal electoral regulations to reduce the threat they pose to elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal regulation of politics has, at its core, the aim of preserving three fundamental democratic values: liberty, equality and deliberative political participation. Yet, the reference point for examining these values is rooted in 19th and 20th century practices: where political campaigning and mobilisation follow terrestrial principles of organisation and regulation is undertaken by the state. Using the most recent empirical evidence drawn from political science on the changing nature of political participation and organisation, this article analyses the challenges of regulating digital politics. It argues that while the major focus of current interventions centres on political disinformation, this obscures more fundamental regulatory concerns such as capturing the diversity of new modes of participation and reconceptualising equality. While a model of co-regulation holds promise by institutionalising communities and individuals within technology companies' policy decision-making processes, firms' ultimate authority to define and control their user base presents challenges for effective participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Socio-Technical Imaginaries (STI) approach in Science and Technology Studies (STS) has illuminated the central role of social imaginaries in shaping the politics of technology. Its emphasis on the multilinear forms of socio-technical development is a useful corrective to universalist explanations of technological change. However, STI lacks a clear account of how inter-societal interaction shapes the imaginaries of any given political community. Synthesizing STI with the theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD) can correct this shortcoming. UCD offers an ontology of universals and accompanying methodology of incorporated comparison, enabling STI to integrate inter-societal causality into its theoretical framework. A combined UCD and STI framework is examined in this paper through a focus on imaginaries of technological innovation in contemporary American foreign policy. Responding to the 'whip of external necessity', US foreign policy seeks to upend technological diffusion and impose global regulatory evenness on national forms of technological innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Swiss Political Science Review is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The record high number of women who ran for the U.S. Congress during the midterm elections led many journalists to proclaim 2018 as another "Year of the Woman." Although not every female candidate was successful, this large number of women running for office provides the opportunity to advance our understanding of the ways in which women present themselves to their voters. Using the "Biography" pages of more than 1,500 2018 congressional campaign websites, we use a structural topic model to examine how these candidates present themselves to their constituencies. In doing this, we find great variance in the presentation styles of women running for Congress in 2018. We also find that prior political experience, more so than gender, is the primary driver in influencing how candidates (both men and women) present themselves. Experienced candidates use similar styles that highlight their past political work while amateur candidates are more likely to use "values-driven" language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Technikgeschichte is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Under the practical symbol of "hacking," computer expertise has been translated into renewed forms of political action in the past two decades. In this article, I examine this phenomenon through the study of self‐organized collectives for technoscientific experts who identify as "hackers." Based on multisited field research in global cities of the Pacific Rim, I describe the formation of a network of community spaces called "hackerspaces" with a focus on their exchange practices and transnational ties. The alternative globalization of hacking through these convivial spaces for socialization and self‐training has created new political locations and horizons, shifting the moral valence of hacking toward more open and collaborative practices. The hackerspace network is one of the key sites for the observation of this transformation for prefiguring new technical and political practices, hence its relevance for anthropological studies of technology and politics in the contemporary moment. [computing, expertise, hacking, technopolitics, hackerspaces] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of the United States (U.S.) census between 1790 and 2020. Topics include the data capture and processing technology for the U.S. census, the federal response to various technical challenges experienced over the centuries, and the political aspects of census demographics.

Scholars have offered important critiques of the socio‐spatial processes of contemporary technological development, including the rise of "smart city" urban development models. While these critiques have been essential for understanding contemporary forms of techno‐capitalism and their reach into new areas, this paper calls for a consideration of alternative modes of digital development in urban life beyond the logics of securitisation and capital accumulation. In particular, I examine the critical discourses and experimental practices of a grassroots movement focused on claiming "technological sovereignty" (TS) in Barcelona. The TS movement is a broad, de‐centralised network of cooperatives, associations, and community initiatives experimenting with alternative practices of locally rooted, open‐source digital development. These groups explore democratic and cooperative practices of work, property, production, and consumption in relation to digital technology, based around an ethics of care and a commitment to working through and within local communities. In examining the values, beliefs, and practices of the TS movement, I bring ongoing discussions around digitalisation and the "smart city" into critical conversation with the extensive literature on prefigurative urban politics and postcapitalist economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the use of a geographically site‐centred, flat ontology to justify contemporary anarchists' predisposition to espouse exclusively prefigurative forms of action. By considering the anarchist, post‐capitalist potential of a technologically enabled peer‐to‐peer (P2P) economy and Collaborative Commons movement, the case is made for the need to acknowledge and engage the higher‐order (emergent) nexuses between state apparatuses and capitalist flows. Doing so, it is argued, makes envisioning the process of creating anarchist oriented, post‐capitalist futures significantly more tangible and convincing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the time of this writing, the Supreme Court seems to have abandoned establishing an objective test for drawing nonpartisan districts altogether--leaving this task largely to state-level courts and legislatures in the aftermath of Rucho v. Common Cause. Many have seen this deferment to the states as the latest in a series of unsatisfactory 'balks,' and have openly wondered what redistricting laws will look like in the next several years as a result of the Court's general refusal to intervene in this area outside of Voting Rights Act² litigation. This paper will argue that there is at least one foreseeable outcome--that (in the absence of mathematically rigorous legal standards for gerrymandering) state-level redistricting processes will be left vulnerable to abuse through the use of sophisticated artificial intelligence platforms. To make this argument, the paper will first provide a brief and beginner-friendly primer on the basics of AI and machine learning. Then it will detail how AI is uniquely suited to perpetrate gerrymanders in ways that computer systems would not have been able to during the 2010 redistricting cycle. Finally, it will conclude with a policy recommendation--that the only reliable way to forestall gerrymandering in the age of AI is to employ a form of fully-automatic redistricting, or a novel semi-automatic redistricting process I will call the "Rawlsian Default". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the current vogue of Carl Schmitt among political theorists who read him as an antidote to the depoliticizing force of economics and technology in the age of neoliberalism and its algorithmic rationalities. It takes Schmitt's sparse reflections about cybernetics and game theory as paradigmatic of the theoretical and political problems raised by any theory positing the autonomy of the political. It suggests that this ultimately misunderstands the role of cybernetic representations of political decision-making in shoring up in the 1960s and 1970s the autonomy of the political that Schmitt so vehemently defended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital revolution invites a reconsideration of the very essence of politics. How can we think about decision, control, and will at a time when technologies of automation are transforming every dimension of human life, from military combat to mental attention, from financial systems to the intimate lives of individuals? This article looks back to a moment in the 20th century when the concept of the political as an independent logic was developed, in a time when the boundaries and operations of the classic state were in question. At the same moment, a whole new technological era was opened up with the emergence of intelligent machines and computers in the postwar cybernetic age. Technology, and cybernetics in particular, loomed large in Carl Schmitt's articulation of the concept of the political, while the problem of radical open decision was at the heart of influential cybernetic approaches to politics. Linking these was the idea of entropic decay. Schmitt's invocation of the theological concept of the Katechon, who restrains chaos in the time before Christ's return, in fact exemplifies the new understandings of order in a cybernetic age facing new challenges of technology in a globalized condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses about the role of technology in social progress to promote a coloniality of knowledge and create a new form of techno-imperialism. It further discusses technology empowering, equalizing and participatory, and technical progress as tantamount to social progress; delivering empowerment and market gains; and unveiling the politics of knowledge. Also mentions about advancement of humanity and reduce poverty.

There has been much work done investigating the adoption of online campaigns in UK general election campaigns. Although some research has focussed on the candidate-level (Gibson, R., W. Lusoli, and S. Ward. 2008. "Nationalizing and Normalizing the Local? A Comparative Analysis of Online Candidate Campaigning in Australia and Britain." Journal of Information Technology and Politics 4: 15-30; Lee, B. 2014. "Window Dressing 2.0: Constituency-level Web Campaigns in the 2010 UK General Election." Politics 34 (1): 45-57; Southern, R. 2015. "Is Web 2.0 Providing a Voice for Outsiders? A Comparison of Personal Web Site and Social Media Use by Candidates at the 2010 UK General Election." Journal of Information Technology & Politics 12 (1): 1-17), this is an under-researched area. This is despite early web-campaign scholars (Margolis, M., and D. Resnick. 2000. Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace Revolution. Sage) maintaining that e-campaigning could provide the most important advantages to campaigns at the candidate level. In light of this, the paper aims to provide the most comprehensive study of candidate-level online campaigning carried out in the UK to date. This paper employs original data, measuring website and social media use by candidates during the 2015 UK general election campaign. These data allow for a detailed explanation of the normalization thesis, one of the leading theories in the field of e-campaigns. The findings here are significant as there are several instances where normalization does not hold, suggesting that online tools are contributing to campaign change. Green Party candidates subverted normalization to a significant degree, particularly on social media. Assessing the campaign content, a quarter of candidates adopted more than one interactive feature on their website and furthermore, interactive use of Twitter was the most common type of Twitter use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais is the property of Centro de Estudos Sociais and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Information on the Remembering Second World War Technologies: Museums, Exhibitions, Technological Objects, and Visitors, a conference organized by the Historisch-Technisches Museum Peenemünde in Peenemünde, Germany from March 22-23, 2018 is presented. Topics discussed include history of technology, history of German politics and Germany in World War II.

In recent years, developments in 3D printing have grasped the public's attention. There are a range of different applications for these technologies that have a number of social, economic, and environmental implications. This essay considers these advancements and what the role of government should be in overseeing these technologies. It argues that although these technologies have been absent from the public administration literature to date, there is an important role that the field can play in supporting governments in this endeavor. In illustrating this, the final section of the essay draws considers how a multilevel governance framework of technology might allow us to consider the broader implications of these technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technology‐driven disruption is taking place at a pace and scale not witnessed before in history. Waves of technology, such as the internet of things, big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, are reshaping our personal and professional lives in profound ways. A new world is emerging in which many of the current job classes will disappear, while new ones, requiring entirely different sets of skills, are emerging. Public administrators are unprepared for the challenges they must face in order to cope with this nonincremental and exponential change. Many of the existing government structures and processes that have evolved over the last few centuries will likely become irrelevant in the near future. There is a compelling need to lay the groundwork for governments to rethink how they will be able to best serve their constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of settler irrigation systems and water governance in establishing and reinforcing tenacious imperial geographies of whiteness. Through an analysis of the lives and work of two powerful men who made foundational contributions to establishing irrigation economies and water governance systems in Australia and the Western United States, we investigate the racialized sociospatial processes that bound whiteness to water. Alfred Deakin (1856-1919) and Elwood Mead (1858-1936) were men of science, technology, and politics who actively circulated in and shaped transnational flows of knowledge about whiteness and racial hierarchies. As Deakin and Mead vigorously promoted particular social and political systems associated with irrigation, steering water flows toward uses regarded as modern and productive according to taken-for-granted norms, they imagined, naturalized, and privileged a white water citizenry. In the process, they contributed to the dispossession and displacement of Indigenous peoples as well as marginalizing Other water users, most notably Asian migrants. These men's hydro-imaginaries, which were endorsed and enacted by their respective governments, served to motivate a form of state protection of family farms, inculcate civic self-reliance and local organization, and establish the white water citizen, a baseline against which others were expected to conform. By examining the making of white water citizens, we hope to contribute to Indigenous geographies and studies of racialization in rural places, as well as the effects of irrigation in settler nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I project the near-term future of work to ask whether job losses induced by artificial intelligence will increase the appeal of populist politics. The paper first explains how computers and machine learning automate workplace tasks. Automated tasks help to both create and eliminate jobs and I show why job elimination centres in blue-collar and clerical work—impacts similar to those of manufactured imports and offshored services. I sketch the near-term evolution of three technologies aimed at blue-collar and clerical occupations: autonomous long-distance trucks, automated customer service responses, and industrial robotics. I estimate that in the next 5–7 years, the jobs lost to each of these technologies will be modest but visible. I then outline the structure of populist politics. Populist surges are rare but a populist candidate who pits 'the people' (truck drivers, call centre operators, factory operatives) against 'the elite' (software developers, etc.) will be mining many of the US regional and education fault lines that were part of the 2016 presidential election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article develops digital constitutionalism as a common term connecting a constellation of initiatives that seek to articulate a set of political rights, governance norms, and limitations on the exercise of power on the Internet. We start by reporting on insights from an analysis of the substantive content of over 30 such documents, and make reference to the political and technological changes to which they may relate. We offer an overview of the core actors in the area of digital constitutionalism and a brief exploration of the processes by which their initiatives aim to entrench rights into law and practice. We discuss the changing sites of political and legal intervention, including a more recent focus on domestic and regional initiatives. Finally, we consider what a future research agenda could entail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Attempts to establish constitutional provisions for the Internet have been promoted since the late 1990s, mainly by the global civil society and intergovernmental organisations. More recently, a new wave of digital constitutionalism has emerged from the nation-state level, and particularly from national parliaments. In order to better understand this process, the article seeks to investigate, from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective, whether and to what extent parliamentary initiatives exhibit specific political features compared to constitutional attempts emerging from other kinds of sources. Further, the study aims to assess if drafting initiatives overlap or, rather, respond in different ways to different constitutional concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article, based on structured interviews with fifteen of the main national observation groups of Latin America, shows that the most active civil society groups have been applying a variety of tools involving new information and communication technologies since 2005 to conduct what is known in English as crowdsourced election observation. According to those interviewed, the new technologies have mainly served to raise awareness among the general population of the importance of elections, to have people involved in observation activities, and to introduce election observation to areas where it would have been impracticable without these new technologies. Crowdsourced election observation now faces the challenge of setting a commonly accepted standard for verifying the information potentially collected by an anonymous crowd of observers who might not have received enough training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Projections indicate that, as an industry, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, commonly known as drones) could bring more than 100 000 jobs and $80 billion in economic growth to the U.S. by 2025 [1]. However, these promising projections do not account for how various publics may perceive such technologies. Understanding public perceptions is important because the attitudes of different groups can have large effects on the trajectory of a technology, strongly facilitating or hindering technology acceptance and uptake [2]. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Those aged 18 to 25 are frequently cited in political rhetoric and scientific literature as one of the most apathetic demographics in Britain. They simultaneously constitute the prime users of new digital media. The assumption of apathy is based on traditional conceptions of political engagement-attendance at rallies, membership in political parties, and voting-that don"t consider a phenomenon like political consumerism, which is estimated to account for 22 to 44 percent of political engagement in the United States and Europe. This article explores youth involvement in politics by drawing on a series of interpretative phenomenological analysis interviews regarding social media usage and its suitability as a medium for facilitating political and civic mobilization. It argues that social media enables people to obtain political knowledge and generate feelings of solidarity, and illustrates how internal belief systems act as predictors of trust in the existing political structure and the media systems surrounding it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the 9th CPA India Regional Conference that was held in Udaipur, Rajasthan, India from 21 to 22 August 2023, discussing how Parliamentarians can be more effective at encouraging good governance through digital empowerment.

Paul Goodman’s argument that “whether or not it draws on new scientific research, technology is a branch of moral philosophy, not of science” is an earlier formulation of what emerged in the 1980s as the “precautionary principle.” It constitutes a new approach that shifts the burden of proof from those who a technological development has adversely affected (caveat emptor) to that development’s producers (caveat venditor), who must demonstratepriorto its undertaking that it does not imply damaging or irreversible risks. Its greatest success has come within the framework of the European Union, which, by seeking to integrate it into international treaties, has wished to make it the standard by which governments regulate technoscientific innovations. But acceptance of this principle is not universal, and a rift has grown in international governance, pertaining to grievances about “protectionism.” Exploring the intersection between media ecology and moral and political philosophy, I outline some of the potentially catastrophic threats we face ecologically as a result of our wanton application of technique. I maintain it is necessary in terms of long-term survival to alleviate the gravity of our present situation through universal adoption of the precautionary principle in matters related to both domestic and international governance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Taking up experiments in “civic innovation” as windows into the making of new urban worlds, I attempt in this essay to map out the parameters of a novel framework for municipal rule and account for the conditions underlying its ascendance in San Francisco, CA. I explore how productions of urban space and nature today serve as the means and objects of an emerging mode of government premised on yoking all forms of urban activity to the dictates of innovation. When proponents of civic innovation pursue particular forms of intervention in the built environment to constitute urban subjects as human capital, they imbibe, reproduce, and enact normative notions about the nature of the city as a problem to manage. Though the project of civic innovation is neither complete nor inevitable, the political vision animating it entails the subsumption of urban life as such within a rubric of decision making modeled on the market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The popular uprising that began in Syria in 2011 generated an unprecedented number of YouTube videos recording events in Syria; this emphasized how the social media platform had become an important alternative space for news and information, a space beyond the control of the government. In this article, I address the role of Syrian video activism in the Syrian revolution, and pay particular attention to why young Syrian antiregime protesters started recording and uploading their videos on YouTube. As such, I do not focus on technology or the medium per se, but on the peoples' motivations--what led them to upload digital video content as testimonies of revolutionary events and violence. Based on observation of verified YouTube clips, field visits to Turkey and Syria and semi-structured interviews with Syrian video activists between the years 2014 and 2016, I suggest that Syrian video activists can be seen as revolutionary filmmakers similar to the twentieth-century 'Kinoks', or kino-ki, that formed part of Dziga Vertov's Soviet filmmakers collective whose radical experiment aimed to bridge social revolution and realist cinematic practice (Tomas 1992) and document reality 'As It Is'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the practice of news journalists at Iraqiya, the Iraqi state broadcaster, in the context of the continuing conflict in Iraq. The paper draws on eighteen months of fieldwork at the channel's headquarters in Baghdad and on interviews with media practitioners throughout the news department. In this article, I show how Iraqiya news employees redefine media professionalism and ethics in the context of an ongoing conflict. I argue that Iraqiya's news practitioners exist in a liminal state that emerged from their lived experience of the ongoing conflict, a conflict that has brought about new journalistic identities and modes of practice as violence and war have become normalized in everyday practices and lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines social media responses to the 13 November 2015 Paris attacks by the Islamic State. First impressions of over 2,000,000 tweets containing hashtags #PrayforParis and #PrayforSyria suggested a conflation of three issues: (1) Migration: were the attackers homegrown or carrying overseas passports? (2) Violence: why was Paris attacked and why is France bombing the Islamic State? (3) Media: what role should mainstream and social media play during events that are local and global, unique and yet part of a series? However, instead of conflating media, migration and terrorism, we found users of both hashtags discussing Syria, foreign policy, and justice and fairness. Building on previous research exploring how social media affordances encourage certain communication behaviors, we test whether Twitter's reply function is more conducive to antagonistic comments than retweets, which we hypothesise allow for an expression of solidarity and universalism. Conversations about Syria contain greater antagonism, explained by aspects of the tweet, user and network effects. The #PrayforParis and #PrayforSyria conversations exhibit neither the contestation of global attention nor a media-driven cycle of insecurity. The high frequency of agonistic and non-visual tweets, particularly about Syria, suggests a robust exchange of claims, refuting pessimistic depictions of Twitter as a space for superficiality and hate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of social media by groups such as the self-proclaimed Islamic State has been the focus of the press, politicians and scholars, but relatively little attention has been paid to how other actors involved in the Syrian conflict have been using social media platforms. In this article, I address this gap by analyzing how the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces has used Facebook. Specifically, I focus on the main narrative themes emerging in 1,174 posts uploaded to the Coalition's English language Facebook page between November 2012 and March 2015. Recognizing that visual media play an important factor in communicating narratives of conflict, the paper also analyzes 280 sets of images of war posted during this time. I argue that these images construct a visuality focused on 'the pain of others' (Sontag 2004) that makes those affected, uprooted, injured, and killed by the conflict in Syria highly visible. In making this claim, I explore how this visuality of suffering has evolved over the course of the conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This collection of articles contributes to the growing body of research on how technology is affecting peacebuilding, peace and conflict studies, and research methodologies in the field. Assumptions about the use of technology for peace are interrogated, such as the purported deepening of inclusivity and widening of participation that technology provides to peacebuilders and communities. It frames the discussion from a peacefocused perspective, providing a response to the work done by others who have focused on the ways technology makes violence more likely. This supports a holistic discussion of the ways that technology can have an impact on contentious social and political processes. By expanding the base of knowledge about how technology can be used for peace and violence, we hope this collection increases the understanding of the circumstances under which technology amplifies peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]