Unintended by Design: On the Political Uses of “Unintended Consequences”

Parvin, Nassim; Pollock, Anne

doi:10.17351/ests2020.497

Cited by 72 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Facebook, similarly, is doubling down and refusing to apologize further but rather going on the defensive with its own PR strategy, as mentioned in the previous section. To claim that all of these platform ills are the result of “unintended consequences” further absolves the platforms of any blame (Gillespie, 2010; Parvin & Pollock, 2020) and makes it appear as if they were unaware of the adverse effects, which is far from the truth. By deflecting blame, platforms can continue business as usual, and not face any real accountability for the harms that they continue to produce despite their claims that they were attempting to correct these “harms” facilitated and afforded by their services.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Safe from “harm”: The governance of violence by platforms

et al. 2022

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A number of issues have emerged related to how platforms moderate and mitigate “harm.” Although platforms have recently developed more explicit policies in regard to what constitutes “hate speech” and “harmful content,” it appears that platforms often use subjective judgments of harm that specifically pertains to spectacular, physical violence—but harm takes on many shapes and complex forms. The politics of defining “harm” and “violence” within these platforms are complex and dynamic, and represent entrenched histories of how control over these definitions extends to people's perceptions of them. Via a critical discourse analysis of policy documents from three major platforms (Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube), we argue that platforms' narrow definitions of harm and violence are not just insufficient but result in these platforms engaging in a form of symbolic violence. Moreover, the platforms position harm as a floating signifier, imposing conceptions of not just what violence is and how it manifests, but who it impacts. Rather than changing the mechanisms of their design that enable harm, the platforms reconfigure intentionality and causality to try to stop users from being “harmful,” which, ironically, perpetuates harm. We provide a number of suggestions, namely a restorative justice‐focused approach, in addressing platform harm.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Safe from “harm”: The governance of violence by platforms

et al. 2022

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“…In the discussion we have reflected on the potential role and outcomes of utilising digital technology for managing queuing practices at sharing events. We suggest that, although there is certainly scope for technological intervention in food sharing contexts, designers must be conscious of the transformative properties of digital tools and the untainted consequences [78] that might derive from a narrow focus on making food distribution an efficient transaction. As changes in seemingly mundane practices like queuing can incur significant changes in the sharing dynamics within the community, our design reflections outline the sociotechnical challenges in organising the flow of attendees at sharing events.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In their seminal article, Luff and Heath [63] have illustrated the interactional problems that arise when physical artefacts are simply replaced by their digital counterparts. In our setting, although technology could be used to address elements of queuing that are computationally tractable [2] to simply digitise tickets could result in unintended consequences if core concerns are ignored [78]. To exemplify, much of the face-to face interactions that unfold before each event could be removed as a result of digitisation, and with that collective moments of co-operation are transformed into individual and solitary transactions whereby tickets are collected.…”

Section: Mediating Queuing Through Digital Artefactsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Queuing for Waste: Sociotechnical Interactions within a Food Sharing Community

Berns

Rossitto

Tholander

2021

Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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This paper investigates the practices of organising face-to-face events of a volunteer-run food-sharing community in Denmark. The ethnographic fieldwork draws attention to the core values underlying the ways sharing events are organised, and how -through the work of volunteers -surplus food is transformed from a commodity to a gift. The findings illustrate the community's activist agenda of food waste reduction, along with the volunteers' concerns and practical labour of running events and organising the flow of attendees through various queuing mechanisms. The paper contributes to the area of Food and HCI by: i) outlining the role of queuing in organising activism and ii) reflecting on the role that values, such as collective care and commons, can play in structuring queuing at face-to-face events. CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Collaborative and social computing design and evaluation methods.

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“…We emphasize that while the first story does not account for all Black student experiences in CS, there are areas to which many can relate. There are several other themes in Shanel's story that we were unable to address at length: the "unintended consequences" (Parvin & Pollock, 2020) of anticipatedly harmful technologies; the ties to conceptions of Black criminality (Muhammad, 2019) and white innocence (Leonardo, 2004); nuances of class (Eubanks, 2018); and the notion many minoritized students already have of "selling out" through participation in CS careers (Vakil, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

We Tell These Stories to Survive: Towards Abolition in Computer Science Education

Jones

Melo

2021

Can. J. Sci. Math. Techn. Educ.

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Computer science (CS) education finds itself at a pivotal moment to reckon with what it means to accept, use, and create technologies, with the continued recruitment of minoritized students into the field. In this paper, we build on the oral traditions of educating with stories, and take the reader on two journeys. We begin with a story that leads us in thinking about where computer science education is, in the wake of slavery, under the New Jim Code. Within a BlackCrit framework, we shake the grounds of the computer science field, where technologies are often promoted as objective, but reflect and reproduce existing inequalities. In tune with maintaining current systems of power, efforts to broaden participation in computer science have been heavily driven by industry, government, and military interests. These interests ultimately push us farther away from sustainable relations with the earth and with each other, and risk the very lives of the same communities the field claims to help. However, we can rewrite the narratives of the role of technology in our lives. We present a second story in which we place abolitionist theories and practices in conversation with computer science education. In this paper we explore ( 1) In what ways does computing education support systems that enable Black death? and (2) How might integrating an abolitionist framework into computer science open up possibilities for worldbuilding and dreaming in the name of Black Life? We imagine a different future where computer science is used as a tool in life-affirming, world-building projects. We invite readers to engage with this piece as a part of an active dialogue towards combating anti-Black logics in the field of computer science education.Résumé La formation en informatique se trouve à un moment charnière alors que l'on prend conscience de ce que cela signifie d'intégrer, d'utiliser et de créer des technologies et que l'on continue de recruter des étudiants issus de minorités pour oeuvrer dans ce domaine. Dans cet article, nous partons des traditions orales d'enseignement par récits et amenons le lecteur à s'engager sur deux parcours.

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Unintended by Design: On the Political Uses of “Unintended Consequences”

Cited by 72 publications

References 4 publications

Safe from “harm”: The governance of violence by platforms

Safe from “harm”: The governance of violence by platforms

Queuing for Waste: Sociotechnical Interactions within a Food Sharing Community

We Tell These Stories to Survive: Towards Abolition in Computer Science Education

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