Feel like living in a dystopia? Take a deep breath, get a strong coffee, and let us challenge your ideas of where reality ends, and sci-fi begins…
Filtered results
This issue brings together a selection of articles presented in the Communication Policy and Technology section of the IAMCR conference in 2018.
Facebook shuts the gate after the horse has bolted, and hurts real research in the process
In reaction to the Cambridge Analytica controversy, Facebook has recently announced a substantial tightening of access restrictions to the APIs of Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms it owns. Researchers at leading international research organisations are deeply concerned about collateral impacts of the new API access rules. Here is why.
The emergence of the Internet of Anonymous Things (AnIoT)
The rapid development of the Internet of Things - or IoT - affects the protection of privacy in profound ways. Eduardo Magrani argues in favour of a shift from privacy protection to the idea a “right to non-tracking”.
Agribusinesses are buying into big data for its predictive powers, bypassing farmers and aggregating previously proprietary farming data. Given this power asymmetry, what are the ethics of the use of big data in big agriculture?
Post-Snowden cryptography and network security
The “ Post-Snowden Crypto conference ” last week pondered over repairing or replacing core parts of the net, the morale of cryptography and the nihilism of the surveilled society.
Big data: a game changer for social scientists
In a talk within the series “Big Data: Big power shifts?” held on 5 November 2015 in Berlin, sociologist Mike Savage argued that the most successful and popular social scientists primarily build up their work on data analysis.
The World Economic Forum talks internet governance. Who listens?
The World Economic Forum (WEF) starts on Wednesday in Switzerland. Count on internet governance to become a trending topic.
Contrary to the early view that cryptocurrencies’ decentralisation makes them unregulable, the formation of new intermediaries will guarantee regulators’ ultimate power. The key challenge is how to balance control and innovation.
The 'Facebook online social experiment' has caused much controversy. Researchers Cornelius Puschmann and Engin Bozdag review the debate around research ethics and come to the conclusion that "benefits for science should be balanced with possible hazards that may be caused by experiments, rather than precluding that such benefits outweigh the gains