För att kunna upprätthålla välfärden, och möta de många utmaningar samhället står inför, måste den offentliga sektorn hitta nya, effektivare sätt att arbeta. En möjlig väg för att effektivisera den offentliga verksamheten, skulle kunna vara att utveckla nya sätt att använda data som kommunen samlar in. I detta projekt har Helsinborgs kommun velat utforska den outnyttjade potential av kunskap som finns i de data invånarna har delat med sig av till kommunen. Utgångspunkten är att om data från olika förvaltningar kunde kombineras och analyseras på nya relevanta sätt, oberoende av förvaltningsgränserna, skulle man få en mer komplett förståelse för invånarnas situation och på så sätt kunna erbjuda bättre service och tjänster. En sådan samordning av data skulle dock innebära en ny form av intrång i kommuninvånarnas integritet och det är inte säkert att invånarna förstår eller vill ge sitt samtycke till det. Det är också oklart vad förvaltningarna och kommunen som helhet juridiskt får göra när det kommer till datadelning. Delning av invånardata väcker med andra ord både etiska (vad bör man göra?) och rättsliga frågor (vad får man göra?). Rapporten undersöker medborgarnas inställning till kommunens nuvarande och önskade dataanvändning, samt de rättsliga förutsättningarna för att dela data mellan kommunala myndigheter, och sätter de båda utgångspunkterna i relation till varandra.

Studien är en del i ett tvåårigt projekt som undersökt invånarna i Helsingborgs stads inställning till kommunens nuvarande och önskade dataanvändning och digitaliseringsarbete, specifikt vad rör AI­baseradsamkörning av förvaltningarnas invånardata. Målet har varit att ge Helsingborgs stad, liksom andra kommunder i Sverige, underlag för hur datadriven teknik kan användas på ett etiskt gott sätt, utifrån invånarnas perspektiv.

YouTube has become the number-one outlet for children’s programming and video entertainment (Ahn, 2022). In Sweden, children spend several hours a day on the platform (Statens medieråd, 2021:58). 60 % of children aged 9–12, and 80% of Swedish teenagers follow a YouTuber or influencer (ibid:83). This form of micro-celebrity constitutes an important part of children’s media culture and everyday life, contributing to commodification and commercialisation of childhood. YouTubers are not only singers, gamers or entertainers, they are “promotional intermediaries” (Jaakkola, 2020:239). Youtubers make a living from advertising products through sponsoring agreements (influencer marketing), or from advertising their own products and brands, in the form of merchandise (“merch”).

Even though the YouTuber is a widely popular phenomenon, we still know surprisingly little of it from a child perspective. There is a lack of in-depth knowledge on how the child audience perceives and engages with Youtubers as commercial actors (Jaakkola, 2020). In light of this, the aim of the present paper is to further our understanding of how children appropriate sponsored content and merch within the context of the para-social relation between child and Youtuber.

To study children’s appropriation of sponsored content and merch among Youtubers, we draw from an interview study with 19 Swedish children aged 10-13. The results reveal how children’s meaning-making mainly centered around the relevance or irrelevance of this media content within the context of their everyday lives, and their moral economy (Silverstone, 1994) was an integrated part of their discussions. Children also expressed how they engaged in financial and moral support in order to enable Youtubers’ content creation, for instance by purchasing merch or sponsored products, hence positioning themselves as active agents within the commercial media logic.

References

Ahn, R. J. (2022). Exploration of parental advertising literacy and parental mediation: Influencer marketing of media character toy and merchandise. Journal of Advertising, 51(1), 107-115.

Jaakkola, M. (2020). From vernacularized commercialism to kidbait: Toy review videos on YouTube and the problematics of the mash-up genre. Journal of Children and Media, 14(2), 237-254.

Silverstone, R. (1994). Television and everyday life. London: Routledge.

Statens medieråd (2021). Ungar & medier 2021 En statistisk undersökning av ungas medievanor och attityder till medieanvändning. [Young people & media 2021 A statistical survey of young people's media habits and attitudes towards media use.]  Availible at https://www.statensmedierad.se/rapporter-och-analyser/material-rapporter-ochanalyser/ungar--medier-2021 

In data societies, as everyday activities are mediated by digital technologies, individuals are thrown into a digital existence, even if they are not aware of their digital interactions. Digital technologies are not value-free or unbiased. Contemporary discourses about digital natives and late adopters contribute to reinforcing negative stereotypes about older users of digital technologies and influence the design, development, marketing and usage of digital technologies. Such discourses disregard how digital trajectories and personal circumstances influence media use in all stages of everyday life. Hence, occasional digital technology users, and older adults in particular, stand a higher risk of exclusion and loss of autonomy. In this chapter, we briefly introduce ageism and digital ageism in data societies, definitions and previous research as a background and introduction to the following chapters. Our aim is to underline how socio-technical and cultural analyses may contribute to raising awareness about digital ageism in data societies. Only by initiating a discussion may existing power relationships be challenged and contemporary inequalities understood.

This anthology contributes to creating awareness on how digital ageism operates in relation to the widely spread symbolic representations of old and young age around digital technologies, the (lack of) representation of diverse older individuals in the design, development, and marketing of digital technologies and in the actual algorithms and datasets that constitute them. It also shows how individuals and institutions deal with digital ageism in everyday life.

In the past decades, digital technologies permeated most aspects of everyday life. With a focus on how age is represented and experienced in relation to digital technologies leading to digital ageism, digitalisation’s reinforcement of spirals of exclusion and loss of autonomy of some collectives is explored, when it could be natural for a great part of society and represent a sort of improvement.

The book addresses social science students and scholars interested in everyday digital technologies, society and the power struggles about it, providing insights from different parts of the globe. By using different methods and touching upon different aspects of digital ageism and how it plays out in contemporary connected data societies, this volume will raise awareness, challenge power, initiate discussions and spur further research into this field.

This chapter zooms in on the Silicon Valley, the US centre for innovative technology and home to 2000 technology companies. Inspired by the terminology of Sassen (2014), this chapter will describe how the technology industry has created a system of multiple modes of expulsions of “older” workers – from work relations, workspaces, ideologies and values, as well as digital products and services. The main purpose is to propose a theoretical framework guiding future empirical and critical research into the phenomenon of ageism, as well as other systems of oppression and discrimination in the technology industry. In this chapter, we propose a concept of “Silicon Valley Ageism” which is understood as negative attitudes, beliefs and behaviours towards adults perceived as “older” and manifested in interpersonal relations and institutional practices, as well as their narratives. This type of ageism can affect people already in their 30s. The aim of the chapter is to explore (1) what narratives of “older” age are constructed in Silicon Valley, (2) how this relates to workplace practices in the Valley and (3) how this has a bearing on the products and services coming out of Silicon Valley.

This chapter focuses on how technology culture, from the beginning, has been geared towards the youth. Early hacking, for example, had a teenage rebellion to it, anti-authoritarian prankish boys in, first, the computer labs of established American universities and later in the garages in middle-class Silicon Valley suburbia. This resonates in the industry's more recent turn towards entrepreneurship. The chapter thus provides a backdrop to how ageism in digital technologies can be understood and made sense from a more historical and cultural perspective. The chapter also discusses how technology culture's many different roots and influences have made certain tensions apparent, for example, left-leaning hippies versus libertarian entrepreneurs. How such tensions are navigated also points towards a fundamentally youth-oriented culture. Empirically the chapter is based on an extensive interview study conducted between 2018 and 2020

This presentation attends to tensions and negotiations surrounding the introduction and development of a news-ranking algorithm in a Swedish daily. Approaching algorithms as culture, being composed of collective human practices, the study emphasizes socio-institutional dynamics in the everyday life of the algorithm. The focus on tensions and negotiations is justified from an institutional perspective and operationalized through an analytical framework of logics. Empirically the study is based on interviewswith 14 different in-house workers at the daily, journalists as well as programmers andmarket actors. The study shows that logics connected to both journalism and programming co-developed the news-ranking algorithm. Tensions and their negotiations around these logics contributed to its very development.One example is labeling of the algorithm as editor-led, allowing journalists to oversee some of its parameters. Social practices in the newsroom, such as Algorithm-Coffee, was also important for its development. In other words, different actors, tensions between them and how these were negotiated, co-constituted by the algorithm itself.

This presentation focuses on Uganda, a country infamous for its state-sanctioned homophobia. This international attention has steadily increased the number of LGBT+ organizations in the country. In this article, we set out to study what organizations are more central and more peripheral in the Ugandan LGBT+ Twittersphere. Following an analytical framework around rationalities of mediated participation, we have studied with whom Ugandan LGBT+ organizations relate through mapping retweets and @mentions. The network maps reveal a dividing line between more well-funded and internationally connected organizations and younger, more peripheral organizations. Complementing these maps with qualitative data, we conclude that access to funds and negotiating visibility are rationales behind the network structure. The article reveals an interesting use of Twitter, both as an instrument for advocacy work and for expressing and negotiating themselves as part of a larger LGBT+ community.  

This article unpacks different meanings of visibility and adds to a more complex and nuanced understanding of visibility and its role in LGBT+ activism in Uganda, a notorious case of political homophobia. Public visibility has a central, although contested, role here. The aim of the study is to explore how visibility is understood and navigated among international development actors, local LGBT+ activists, and unaffiliated people with same-sex desires. Interviews conducted in Kampala December 2021 – January 2022 reveal different and surprising narratives surrounding visibility. Local unaffiliated individuals and activists agreed on the importance of making the LGBT+ rights struggle more visible. This, however, did not translate into a wish to “come out” themselves. International development actors, on the other hand, expressed a need for caution regarding their own visibility.