Metaphors in critical Internet and digital media studies

Wyatt, Sally

doi:10.1177/1461444820929324

Cited by 38 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Researchers build social imaginaries by using metaphorical concepts, such as networks or social contracts, and linking them in plots to explain their observations. This even happens in rather tiny sequences, for instance when explaining that "artificial intelligence" is able to "learn itself" from "data" (Rehak 2021; for further examples Wyatt 2021). As digitalization research relates technology to social processes, it also carries specific ideas about the general fabric of the social world, its transformation over time, and the suitable forms of subjectivity, politics, and power.…”

Section: Gains For Digitalization Research: Analytical Advantages and Methodological Reflexivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Political ideas of the network society: why digitalization research needs critical conceptual analysis

August

2021

Z Politikwiss

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In this article, I argue for an interpretive approach to digitalization research that analyzes the concepts, narratives, and belief systems in digitalization debates. I illustrate this methodological proposal by assessing the spread of network ideas. Many political actors and digitalization researchers follow network ideas, e.g. by claiming that the rise of a network society must lead to network governance. In contrast to this narrative, I argue that there are multiple visions of the digital society, each of which follows a specific pattern of epistemology, social imaginary, and political proposals. These competing self-interpretations must be investigated by digitalization research in order to map and evaluate different pathways into a digital society. For doing so, critical conceptual analysis draws on political theory, critical conceptual history, and the sociology of knowledge. It offers two major benefits for digitalization research. Firstly, it provides a systematic overview of competing governance rationalities in the digital society, enabling a critical evaluation of their potentials and proposals. Secondly, it enhances the methodological rigor of digitalization research by reviewing the narratives researchers themselves tell. I substantiate these claims by analyzing and historicizing the above network narrative. Tracing it back to cybernetics, I show that it has been used multiple times in efforts to reshape the way we think about society and politics, including our concepts of subjectivity, power, and governance.

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Section: Gains For Digitalization Research: Analytical Advantages and Methodological Reflexivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Political ideas of the network society: why digitalization research needs critical conceptual analysis

August

2021

Z Politikwiss

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“…In this study, metaphor is operationalized as visual, verbal and psychological conceptions (cognitive capacity) that serve, or enable us to connect information about a familiar concept to another familiar concept, thus leading to new understanding. This comparative process allows for new meaning and understanding to emerge (Greene, 1994;Jensen, 2006;Wyatt, 2021).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Evolution of Personal Frames of Reference: Metaphors as Potential Space

Flotman

Barnard

2022

IJDS

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Aim/Purpose: The aim of this study was to explore the value of metaphors as part of a reflexive practice in the context of the evolving frame of reference journey of PhD students in a consulting psychology programme. Background: This study reports on the journey of how the personal frames of reference of PhD students in consulting psychology had evolved at a large open-distance and e-learning university in South Africa. As their respective journeys of becoming consulting psychologists unfolded, participants’ evolutionary journeys were viewed through metaphors. Few studies have investigated how metaphors could be used as a powerful evocative tool to go beyond the rational, conscious and sanitized responses of participants, to explore their underlying frames of reference by surfacing and eliciting implicit meaning. Methodology: This study was based on a hermeneutic phenomenological methodological stance and congruently employed principles of socio-analytic inquiry. The context of this inquiry was a PhD programme in consulting psychology presented at a large open-distance e-learning tertiary institution. Participants comprised ten PhD students. These students were required to engage in various self-reflective exercises throughout their first year, such as journaling and self-reflective essays. Their final exercise was to present their evolving frame of reference as a consulting psychologist, in the form of a visual or tangible metaphor. These final presentations became the protocols for hermeneutic phenomenological analysis in this study. Metaphors were selected through purposive sampling, and they became the “data sources” of the study. Contribution: The study contributes to the teaching of reflexivity in consulting practice. It has implications for the training of doctoral students by making a process available through which students and consultants could access and develop their personal frames of reference. The study shares valuable pedagogical and growth experiences from the perspective of the student in consulting psychology. The research advances the field of consulting psychology by introducing the notion of metaphors as potential space and stimulates further engagement in art-based qualitative inquiry from a socio-analytic stance. Findings: The findings suggest that metaphors have value because they create a connection to emotions, emotional processes and emotional work, facilitate the professional identity construction and reconstruction process and enable a shift from self-reflection to self-reflexivity. It is proposed that metaphors have the inherent capacity to act as potential space. Recommendations for Practitioners: Identity tensions could be alleviated through conscious identity work, when psychologists from different categories transition into consulting psychologists. We pose questions for practitioners to consider. Recommendation for Researchers: Doctoral programmes and research on doctoral studies should explicitly engage with both conscious and unconscious dynamics. This could relate to identity work, relationships and the power of reflexive practices. Impact on Society: Dropout rates of doctoral students are high. The time to complete the degree is also long. This comes at a price for the student, the institution and society. Aspects related to frame of reference, philosophical assumptions, and identity work to be done by the doctoral student should be considered as critical to doctoral programmes and doctoral education. Future Research: Future studies could investigate how consulting frames of reference relate to anxiety, identity and the well-being of doctoral students. Studies could also be conducted to see how the participants’ frames of reference in this study have further evolved over their consulting careers.

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“…Rather, data and technology have an extensive material footprint (Prainsack, 2019). The metaphor of the 'cloud' in cloud computing is often merely a fog that obscures the social and technical reality behind it (Wyatt, 2021).…”

Section: Ai-as-a-servicementioning

confidence: 99%

Lifting the curtain: Strategic visibility of human labour in AI-as-a-Service

Newlands

2021

Big Data & Society

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Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service (AIaaS) empowers individuals and organisations to access AI on-demand, in either tailored or ‘off-the-shelf’ forms. However, institutional separation between development, training and deployment can lead to critical opacities, such as obscuring the level of human effort necessary to produce and train AI services. Information about how, where, and for whom AI services have been produced are valuable secrets, which vendors strategically disclose to clients depending on commercial interests. This article provides a critical analysis of how AIaaS vendors manipulate the visibility of human labour in AI production based on whether the vendor relies on paid or unpaid labour to fill interstitial gaps. Where vendors are able to occlude human labour in the organisational ‘backstage,’ such as in data preparation, validation or impersonation, they do so regularly, further contributing to ongoing techno-utopian narratives of AI hype. Yet, when vendors must co-produce the AI service with the client, such as through localised AI training, they must ‘lift the curtain’, resulting in a paradoxical situation of needing to both perpetuate dominant AI hype narratives while emphasising AI’s mundane limitations.

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Metaphors in critical Internet and digital media studies

Cited by 38 publications

References 19 publications

Political ideas of the network society: why digitalization research needs critical conceptual analysis

Political ideas of the network society: why digitalization research needs critical conceptual analysis

The Evolution of Personal Frames of Reference: Metaphors as Potential Space

Lifting the curtain: Strategic visibility of human labour in AI-as-a-Service

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