My unexpectedly militant bots: A case for Programming-as-Social-Science

Abstract

This article examines bots – software applications that automate web-based tasks, and which often mimic human interaction and communication – to consider sociological responses to software design and computer programming. Leveraging design methodologies for critical sociological purposes (a) allows us to envision programming as a means of opening up ‘black boxes’ by engaging more directly with the code through which software applications are executed, and (b) indicates the potential for sociology practitioners to design software ourselves – to build applications that fulfil the radical promise of sociology by intervening in social processes. To concretise these ideas, this article presents two stories about social media bots developed by the author: ‘Philbot’ (a Facebook random status generator) and ‘ @_Zen_Bot_ ’ (a Twitter service that provides mock lifestyle advice to users). On the basis of this demonstration, the article proposes a near-future vision of sociology where Programming-as-Social-Science features as a core research method/skill/tool.

The digital writing of human rights narratives: Failure, recognition, and the unruly inscriptions of database infrastructures

“…Moreover, given that novel data infrastructures continue to proliferate across all areas of society, the analysis also gestures towards the growing relevance and value of both software and infrastructure studies for other areas of sociological enquiry which, like the narrativisation of human rights, have not ordinarily come within their purview. In this sense, it reinforces calls for greater computational literacy as a central aspect of the sociologist’s toolkit (Brooker, 2019; Orton-Johnson et al, 2015).…”

Fact-Check Spreading Behavior in Twitter: A Qualitative Profile for False-Claim News

“…Roughly, it was a bot when someone said something like "illegal immigrant" it replied with a politically correct suggestion for an alternative. This profile was reported many people, and in the end, suspended by Twitter [3]. Somehow it degenerated into a subverted yet virtuous spam engine.…”

Editorial introduction: Towards a machinic anthropology

“…Only a limited number of recent works represent a genuine anthropology as data science approach. These include Hsu's (2014) spirited plea for ‘unleashing’ quantitative data ‘from the disciplinary compartmentalization of science’ to ‘discover new interpretative and speculative territories’ and Brooker's no less enthusiastic suggestion to ‘incorporate bots into the sociological mold to harness them for sociological service’ (2019: 2). After all, as Brooker also elaborates upon in his commentary to this special theme issue, algorithms are imbued with ‘the potential to perform a wider range of sociologically [and by implication anthropologically] relevant functions’ (2019: 1234).…”

“…These include Hsu's (2014) spirited plea for ‘unleashing’ quantitative data ‘from the disciplinary compartmentalization of science’ to ‘discover new interpretative and speculative territories’ and Brooker's no less enthusiastic suggestion to ‘incorporate bots into the sociological mold to harness them for sociological service’ (2019: 2). After all, as Brooker also elaborates upon in his commentary to this special theme issue, algorithms are imbued with ‘the potential to perform a wider range of sociologically [and by implication anthropologically] relevant functions’ (2019: 1234). Munk et al's contribution to this issue, where three authors in their own words seek to build a deliberately playful ‘an ethnographic algorithm capable of passing for a native’, is case point (indeed, during the workshop in Copenhagen, Munk and colleagues brought with them a physical prototype of an ‘anthropological machine’!).…”