Dec 1, 2016
IGNORANCE: The Power of Non-Knowledge. The 9th event of the Disruption Network Lab. Panel: Manipulation Incorporated: On Social Media Targeting, Self-Branding, and Emotional Pornification with Ippolita (activists and writers, IT), Hannah Jane Parkinson (digital culture journalist and writer, UK), and Vladan Joler (SHARE Foundation director, chair of New Media Department, University of Novi Sad, RS). Moderated by Tatiana Bazzichelli (artistic director, Disruption Network Lab, IT/DE). Which strategies of manipulation are hidden behind the use of social media? What are the targeting methods used by Facebook during political campaigns? How does an algorithm quantify and influence our intimate lives? Who is controlling our data and for what are they used? Social media corporations have been basing their economy on trade of personal connections, targeting of users, and the commercial use of our sensitive data. This is a trade that most of the time we accept almost automatically, exchanging data for free services. But while we experiment the pleasure of being always connected and the playful dependence of exposing our intimate digital self, somebody else is profiting, and even trying to orient our political vote. As pointed out by the Ippolita collective, we are electrical souls permanently in ecstasy, practicing the discipline of emotional pornography in the media spotlight - without realising we are at the mercy of a doping and manipulative power. A power that knows how to use social media, as well as operate across them, as we read on The Guardian piece by Hannah Jane Parkinson, who will describe Trump’s social media strategy, as well as the post-fact problematic posed by the “Vote Leave” campaign by Boris Johnson in the UK. With Vladan Joler we will investigate what is at the core of the Facebook Algorithmic Factory, to map and visualise a complex and invisible exploitation process hidden behind a black box of the World’s largest social network. www.disruptionlab.org/ignorance (http://www.disruptionlab.org/ignorance/) Photo: Maria Silvano Produced by Voice Republic For more podcasts visit http://voicerepublic.com