Digital Anthropology and Facebook Governance
Everyday Mediations with Artificial Intelligence
You may not be familiar with the field of Anthropology. It is a field of research that has been concerned with anthropos (human) and logos (sense, meaning). This has largely been done through the ethnographic method and through participant observation as well as an engagement with a wide varieties of places in comparison. In this article I will look at an article by Daalsgard and discuss after Facebook governance with the recent development of the global oversight board.
What is digital anthropology?
“Digital anthropology is the anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnography, cyberanthropology, and virtual anthropology.”
That is what is said, however I argue that if you are to do so then you likely have to engage with other parts of society. This is generally agreed, as anthropologists strive for a holistic engagement, often attempting to see the connections within a small part of society, while recognising that it cannot always be extrapolated to ‘everyone’ it still holds some importance.
An Obscure Field
The anthropologists often thought of their field as bounded — onto a place, and this is the case in many settings still whether that is a shop in a city or the city itself as a field site. With the recent change in digital media this can be ambiguous:
“The challenges that ethnographers encounter obviously depend on the ‘field’ in which they engage. However, what counts as a field is a continuous and open-ended question, which again depends on the social relationships the researcher develops as part of fieldwork, and the data that one ‘collects’ or ‘produces’ from these relationships.” [1]
Daalsgaard argues that ethnographers already has the tools they need:
- Training in paying attention to detail through observation;
- Immersion into a diversity of lived lives through participation;
- systematic modes of questioning through interviewing;
- and epistemologies for working with text, images, film and other media representations of self and other.
Facebook is spatially different than say other digital fieldsites that has been studied such as Second Life and World of Warcraft. He argues that studying Facebook alone might not give a good enough picture of the social life, additionally there are different ‘affordances’.
Affordances — Possible Actions
Affordances are an object’s properties that show the possible actions users can take with it, thereby suggesting how they may interact with that object.
It is a term adopted by interaction design. However it goes further back to the American psychologist James J. Gibson, who coined the term in his 1966 book, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. Daalsgaard being in different locations still managed to keep up with his qualitative research engagement in understanding different groups, or being updated until he returned to the place he was studying in Papua New Guinea.
“However, it is difficult for ethnographers to know whether their own bodily experiences are shared by the people they communicate with. There are therefore certain limits to knowing how one’s informants know, because of the bodily absence, which previously has been a source of authenticity to the ethnographic account.”
Pros and Cons of Fieldwork Online
He mentions a few issues with doing fieldwork online:
- He describes how the death of someone far away in the community where he was doing fieldwork both made him closer and feel the distance.
- Implications for interview techniques which will necessarily differ when compared with the oral interview.
- Then there is the time lag in written communication. It may be good for reflexivity but not for spontaneity.
- There are three types of authenticity I want to address. Firstly, why people post what they do, secondly whether they are who they appear to be and thirdly the authenticity of the ethnographic account.
- Twitter users employ deliberate strategies to target different audiences, conceal subjects and attempt to maintain authenticity in their posts. Their tech- niques of audience management resemble practices of personal branding and strategic self-commodification, but if posts are a form of personal branding, then how much can ethnographers know about people through online media?
He is also optimistic about certain aspects:
- Facebook data, like all other forms of data, are produced socially. So in particular when carried out in conjunction with offline participant observation, the textual and visual analysis of online phenomena is a valuable set of data which can elicit social patterns.
- Precisely, the new presentation of self via Face- book and other social media seems like a promising venture for further anthropological research in PNG.
- Facebook’s epistemological affordances are crucial to the ethnographer, who tries to understand the analytical value of ethnographic data from Facebook. However, if con- sidered in terms of the notions of revelation and concealment, the affordances can be dis- cussed in the wider sense of how the template as a cultural form becomes integrated with the cultural practices and understandings of its users.
- Roughly speaking, Miller argues that, like Kula exchange, Facebook can work as a spatiotemporal extension of persons and their ‘fame’ by making their exchanges with others ‘public’.
Roughly he concludes that ethnographers can be bewildered by Facebook.
Artificial Intelligence and Everyday use of Facebook
It is challenging to begin to understand how sociality is influenced by or on Facebook. Then again should we consider it digital infrastructure such as the infrastructure of a city — streets have particular affordances, and the venues you can choose in a digital sense is such as well. Particular pathways are made for expression or not-to-be-expressed. There are laws, however these are international, sociality is being managed carefully both in a commercial sense and in a citizen-like wellbeing perspective (at least to shield you from things that would make you want to quit the platform).
In September 2019 Facebook wrote about their board structure [2].
“The content policies we write and the decisions we make every day matter to people. That’s why we always have to strive to keep getting better. The Oversight Board will make Facebook more accountable and improve our decision-making. This charter is a critical step towards what we hope will become a model for our industry.”
– Nick Clegg, VP Global Affairs and Communications, Facebook
It has government document and governance structure.
Trust in a sense is carefully managed, and in a way again we can draw parallels to other aspects of society where this ‘trust’ is being spoken of.
Trust is measured after all.
“As trust represents a positive perception of government, it is measured by perception surveys, asking citizens, businesses or experts whether they trust (or have confidence) in government, leadership, and/or specific government institutions (e.g. local authorities or the justice system).”
There are OECD guidelines on measuring and improving trust [3]:
It makes a distinction between interpersonal trust and institutional trust.
Indeed in the new principles on artificial intelligence [4] it is mentioned early on:
“The OECD Principles on Artificial Intelligence promote artificial intelligence (AI) that is innovative and trustworthy and that respects human rights and democratic values.”
They have principles too, where I have added a few bold markings:
“The OECD AI Principles
The Recommendation identifies five complementary values-based principles for the responsible stewardship of trustworthy AI:
- AI should benefit people and the planet by driving inclusive growth, sustainable development and well-being.
- AI systems should be designed in a way that respects the rule of law, human rights, democratic values and diversity, and they should include appropriate safeguards — for example, enabling human intervention where necessary — to ensure a fair and just society.
- There should be transparency and responsible disclosure around AI systems to ensure that people understand AI-based outcomes and can challenge them.
- AI systems must function in a robust, secure and safe way throughout their life cycles and potential risks should be continually assessed and managed.
- Organisations and individuals developing, deploying or operating AI systems should be held accountable for their proper functioning in line with the above principles.”
Facebook will have a governance structure in place.
In fact there is a membership. They are committed to selecting a diverse and qualified group of 40 board members, who will serve three-year terms. These will be making content decisions.
“Both Facebook and its users will be able to refer cases to the board for review.”
Conclusion
I think Daalsgard is right to look at the detail of the social practice and be sceptical on the type of insight conveyed or covered by doing ethnography online. What he misses at least if we consider a political economy approach toe Facebook any ethnographic practice happens inside a framework closely shaped and in dynamic change. If we took a different perspective we could say it is important to understand and document these changes from a historical point of view, perhaps considering how social media changes over time. Daalsgard has good points that can be built on and his encouragement does help new anthropologists and ethnographers to consider a few issues that may help in doing fieldwork with a digital component.
[1]: Dalsgaard, Steffen (2016) The Ethnographic Use of Facebook in Everyday Life. Anthropological Forum 26 (1): 96–114. ORIA
[2] https://about.fb.com/news/2019/09/oversight-board-structure/
[3] https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/governance/oecd-guidelines-on-measuring-trust_9789264278219-en#page13
This is #500daysofAI and you are reading article 175. I write one new article about or related to artificial intelligence every day for 500 days.
