Sociotechs

The recent Olympic Games and European Football Championship have highlighted once again the importance, and controversiality, of technologies associated with referee decisions. A Video Assistant Referee, or VAR, is tasked with assisting the referee concerning dubious situations in a sports game. While VAR has become part and parcel of the experience of multiple sports, including football, little is known about the complex sociotechnical fabric that plays out every single time a VAR decision is made. Today we are joined by Stan Karanasios and Bikesh Raj Upreti, respectively Associate Professor and Lecturer in the Department of Business Information Systems at the University of Queensland, who look at “addressing equivocality with technology” by means of VAR. With them, we examine the history of some glaring errors of VAR in football and use that as an entry point to discuss VAR, its genesis, and the sociotechnical profile of a technology that the many sports fans among us witness frequently.   Stan Karanasios is an Associate Professor in the Department of Business Information Systems at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland. His research focuses on how digital technology impacts organisations and society, and he has published widely on domains including fintech, the digital transformation of enterprises, and the use of social media platforms in the emergency sector. He is a Senior Editor for Information Systems Journal, an Associate Editor for the European Journal of Information Systems, Section Editor for the Australian Journal on Information Systems, and on the Editorial Board for Mind, Culture & Activity and the International Journal of Information Management.   Bikesh Raj Upreti is a Lecturer in the Department of Business Information Systems at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland. He received his PhD from Aalto University, focusing on developing applications to uncover insights from large-scale text data. He researches applied computational methods and quantitative inquiry of inter-disciplinary phenomena, and has applied such analytical tools for large-scale behavioural and predictive analytics set in Information systems, marketing, finance and political discourses.   Resources:  Karanasios, S., Upreti, B., & Iannacci, F. (2023). When Is a Goal a Goal? Addressing Equivocality with Technology. European Conference of Information Systems (ECIS), Kristiansand, 13-16 June 2023, https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2023_rip/10/.

The ongoing war on Gaza, one of the deadliest military assaults in history, has been accompanied by extreme applications of digital technologies to warfare. This feeds into the many layers of cybercontrol to which Palestine, a land under military and settler occupation, has long been subjected. Today we are joined by Fabio Cristiano to explore data violence in the ongoing Israeli assault, and the multiple implications it has in the space of human and digital rights.   Fabio Cristiano is Assistant Professor in Conflict Studies at Utrecht University. His research explores the making of international conflict in/through cyberspace, focusing primarily on questions related to automation and non-human agency (AI); violence; socio-technical knowledge production; sovereignty/territoriality; and digital rights. He is an Associate Fellow of The Hague Program on International Cybersecurity and the lead editor of Artificial Intelligence and International Conflict in Cyberspace (Routledge, 2023) and Hybridity, Conflict, and the Global Politics of Cybersecurity (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023). Resources: Cristiano, F., & Distretti, E. (2021). Toward an Aesthetics by Algorithms—Palestinian Cyber and Digital Spaces at the Threshold of (In) visibility. The Aesthetics and Politics of the Online Self: A Savage Journey into the Heart of Digital Cultures, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-65497-9_10 . Cristiano, F. (2019). Deterritorializing cyber security and warfare in Palestine: Hackers, sovereignty, and the National Cyberspace as normative. CyberOrient, https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/j.cyo2.20191301.0002. Cristiano, F. (2019). Internet access as human right: a dystopian critique from the occupied Palestinian territory. Springer International Publishing, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-91770-2_12 .

The foundational elements of EU migration policies and security technologies started to take a turn in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, accelerating the research and use of traditional military and war technologies such as drones in civilian border management. In this episode, we explore the role of drones in border studies, the evolving landscape of EU border technologies in the wake of AI, and how these security problems and solutions are co-produced in the frameworks of migration policies with Bruno Oliveira Martins. Bruno is a senior researcher at Peach Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), where he is co-leader of the Security & Technology Research Group and a member of the PRIO Migration Centre. His research is centered on the intricate dynamics of security solutions and their implications for border management and those affected by it. Resources: Martins, Bruno Oliveira & Michael Strange (2019) Rethinking EU external migration policy: contestation and critique, Global Affairs 5 (3): 195–202. Martins, Bruno Oliveira & Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert (2020) EU Border technologies and the co-production of security ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. DOI: 10.1080/1369183X.2020.1851470.

Health data governance should ensure protection for individuals' health data against violations, while enabling the smooth functioning of healthcare systems. Doing so involves a complex set of stakeholders, opening multiple questions which directly affect the way our health data are collected, stored and managed. Today we sit with Dragana Paparova to unpack such questions, learning about issues and practices at the heart of health data governance.  Dragana Paparova is a postdoctoral researcher in Information Systems at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo. Her research is centred on the production, sharing and usage of patient (generated) healthcare data across stakeholders and organisational boundaries. She holds a PhD from University of Agder, and her paper "Data Hierarchies: The Emergence of an Industrial Data Ecosystem", coauthored with Daniel S. Svendsrud, was runner-up for Best Student Paper Award at ICIS 2023. Resources: Paparova, D. (2024). Data spaces and the (trans) formations of data innovation and governance. Doctoral dissertations at University of Agder, https://uia.brage.unit.no/uia-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/3112105/Dissertation.pdf?sequence=4 Paparova, D., Aanestad, M., Vassilakopoulou, P., & Bahus, M. K. (2023). Data governance spaces: the case of a national digital service for personal health data. Information and Organization, 33(1), https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1471772723000052 Svendsrud, D. S., & Paparova, D. (2023). Data Hierarchies: The Emergence of an Industrial Data Ecosystem. International Conference of Information Systems (2023) Proceedings, https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2023/diginnoventren/diginnoventren/14.

The narrative of digital deception pervades the discourse on generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), opening important questions on the validity and verifiability of the information we come across daily. In this landscape, generative AI is now being extensively used to create engaging bots on social media which poses several threats to the fabric of trust and safety we as users expect over the internet. Today we sit with Sippo Rossi to unpack the nature of such problems, how we as users of social media can remain vigilant and its implications on future research on this topic. Sippo Rossi is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen. He is soon to graduate with his PhD from the Department of Digitalization at the Copenhagen Business School, and during his studies, he contributed to research on bot detection on X, formerly Twitter, and the use of AI in research. Resources: Rossi, S., Rossi, M., Mukkamala, R. R., Thatcher, J. B., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2024). Augmenting research methods with foundation models and generative AI. International Journal of Information Management, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0268401223001305. Rossi, S., Kwon, Y., Auglend, O. H., Mukkamala, R. R., Rossi, M., & Thatcher, J. (2022). Are Deep Learning-Generated Social Media Profiles Indistinguishable from Real Profiles?., Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.07214.  Rossi, S., Rossi, M., Upreti, B. R., & Liu, Y. (2020). Detecting political bots on Twitter during the 2019 Finnish parliamentary election. In T. X. Bui (Ed.), Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, HICSS 2020 (pp. 2430-2439). http://hdl.handle.net/10125/64040

Humanitarian aid has undergone significant transformations in recent years, driven in part by the increasing integration of technology and the growing influence of private partners. Such a development not just changes who the actors are also, the mindset and response these actors bring for such an important ecosystem. We sit with Giulio Coppi to understand the principles of humanitarian aid, how digital technologies have been employed and the increasing influence of private players. Giulio Coppi is a senior humanitarian officer at Access Now. Access Now is an organization that defends and extends the digital rights of people and communities at risk. Giulio has been an advocate for open and fair humanitarian technologies and is currently involved in a landscape mapping project to observe the emerging patterns increased private actors in the space.

The notion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for social good is being actively pushed as a route to involve private tech vendors in the pursuit of targets ascribing to the Sustainable Development Goals. With our guest Gianluca Iazzolino, we discuss the implications of the "AI for Social Good" (AI4SG) logic for intended providers and beneficiaries, with a focus on Africa. From biometric databases to large-scale monitoring infrastructures, the discussion unravels the problematic implications of the AI4SG discourse in the African context. Gianluca Iazzolino is a Lecturer in Digital Development at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. He uses ethnographic methods to explore the precarious balance of inclusion and surveillance that characterizes most digital development initiatives. His research works can be accessed on Researchgate. Sources: Iazzolino, G. (2021). Infrastructure of compassionate repression: making sense of biometrics in Kakuma refugee camp. Information Technology for Development, 27(1), 111-128.

At a time when machines undertake practices previously delegated to human expertise, questions of skill erosion become prominent. Our guests Esko Penttinen and Joona Ruissalo illuminate the intersections of automation and skill erosion, which denotes a situation of decline in people's ability to manage tasks with the same effectiveness as before. With rich empirics from the accounting sector, they share insights on how the "grip of automation" interacts with skill erosion, and on the meaning of this for the lived experience of workers in the sector. Esko Penttinen is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at Aalto University, Department of Information and Service Management. Joona Ruissalo is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the same Department, focusing on cognitive automation in the accounting industry. Sources: Rinta-Kahila, Tapani; Penttinen, Esko; Salovaara, Antti; Soliman, Wael; and Ruissalo, Joona (2023) "The Vicious Circles of Skill Erosion: A Case Study of Cognitive Automation," Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 24(5), 1378-1412.DOI: 10.17705/1jais.00829Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/jais/vol24/iss5/2

Data reuse is crucial to making existing datasets accessible across users, systems and organisations. As we discuss today with Elena Parmiggiani, many questions surround data reuse: how can data be managed, curated and prepared to achieve cross-contextual reusability? How does this affect social and political responsibility across countries, regions and sites of data production? Elena Parmiggiani is Associate Professor in Digital Collaboration and Computer-Supported Collaborative Work, and Deputy Head of Department for Sustainability at the Department of Computer Science, NTNU, Norway. Her latest work focuses on data curation and management, a topic to which she brings empirical insights on environmental monitoring in Norway and on dynamics occurring - to cite Elena's work - in the "backrooms" of data science.  Sources: Parmiggiani, E., Amagyei, N. K., & Kollerud, S. K. S. (2023). Data curation as anticipatory generification in data infrastructure. European Journal of Information Systems, 1-20. Parmiggiani, E., Østerlie, T., & Almklov, P. G. (2022). In the backrooms of data science. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 23(1), 139-164.

In this episode we discuss data labeling, the intensive work behind the scenes of AI, with Srravya Chandhiramowuli. Through Srravya's expertise, we explore the myth and realities of data labeling, focusing on the demands experienced by workers and on the many competing challenges experienced in meeting them. Our conversation continues by exploring the origins of such demands, delving into the interests of client firms and their impacts on the lives of workers. Srravya is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Human Computer Interaction Design (HCID) Center at City, University of London. She examines the work practices of data annotation for AI, geopolitics of labour and resources to identify work centric design opportunities and policy interventions. Resources: Chandhiramowuli, S., & Chaudhuri, B. (accepted, 2023). “Match made by humans: A critical enquiry into human-machine configurations in data labelling.” In IEEE Proceedings of the 56th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Hawaii. Chandhiramowuli, S., & Chaudhuri, B. (2021). “Politics of Data in & as News: A Data Justice Perspective.” AMCIS 2021 Proceedings. 13. 

In this episode, we sit down with Aleksi Aaltonen to discuss his focus on data as semantic material and its implications for understanding technology in society. Delving into data ontology, we uncover its implications for the big data industry and how data simplification impacts its ability to capture reality. Aleksi introduces the concept of "data commodities," discussing their significance in today's landscape. Finally, we delve into data-induced harm in the information systems and our role as researchers to overcome it. Aleksi Aaltonen is Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems at Fox Business School, Temple University. He uses computational, quantitative, and qualitative methods to understand Information Systems phenomena, and his work offers multiple insights into understanding the world through data. Resources:  Aaltonen, A., Alaimo, C., & Kallinikos, J. (2021). The making of data commodities: Data analytics as an embedded process. Journal of Management Information Systems, 38(2), 401-429. Aaltonen, A., & Penttinen, E. (2021). What makes data possible? A sociotechnical view on structured data innovations. Hawaii Conference of Information Systems Sciences (HICSS), 2021.

We delve into the world of border securitization and specifically, the involvement of AI in the EU's border externalization strategy. Our guest Antonella Napolitano sheds light on using surveillance technologies at the borders. From the concept of "border externalization" to the implications of the AI Act, we explore the consequences of outsourcing surveillance and the role of the EU as a funder. Join us as we discuss how these technologies shape migration policies and consider how researchers and activists could make an impact toward better outcomes. Finally, we explore ways to oppose the detrimental outcomes of surveillance technologies and curb the degenerative dynamics of EU-funded surveillance. Antonella Napolitano is an independent advisor who works with a broad spectrum of organizations in the spaces of human rights and protection. She is the author of “Artificial Intelligence: The New Frontier of the EU’s Border Externalisation Strategy”, a report published by EuroMed Rights on the involvement of AI in EU’s border externalization and its surveillance implications. Resources:  Report: Artificial Intelligence: The New Frontier Of The EU's Border Externalisation Strategy Report: Europe's Techno Borders

Hi, Welcome to the inaugural episode of "Sociotechs," we are Silvia and Tejas, the hosts of this brand-new podcast. As researchers with diverse interests, Silvia delves into data justice, digital identity, and the politics of sociotechnical artifacts, while Tejas explores digital behaviors and value creation amidst emerging technologies. Together, we seek to understand how technologies are designed and employed to participate in our world. Why a podcast, you might ask? We believe that critical discussions around sociotechnical systems should be accessible to a broader audience. By featuring engaging conversations and diverse perspectives from academic, activist, and civil society realms, we hope to ignite deeper discussions about the state of the world. In this podcast, we'll explore multiple intersections of technology and social issues, with a keen focus on data-generated harm and the quest for fairer technologies. Expect insightful interviews with speakers from all corners of the world, untangling the design and politics of sociotechnical artifacts. Join us on this thrilling expedition as we amplify voices, share research, and cultivate dialogues to imagine a future where technology contributes to a fairer and more equitable world. Let's dive into the realm of Sociotechs, where the world of digital technologies meets the complexities of society! References: COVID-19 from the Margins: Pandemic Invisibilities, Policies and Resistance in the Datafied Society Music by Shounak Shirodkar