Socio-technological Networks Research Articles

As redes sociotecnológicas e a operação do imaginário instituinte

Resumo O estudo discute as maneiras pelas quais as redes sociotecnológicas expressam a conjugação de legein e de teukhein, conforme esses termos são concebidos por Castoriadis para designar dimensões do imaginário instituinte. Trata-se de uma reflexão teórica desenvolvida com o objetivo de qualificar as referidas redes como processos do imaginário social. A relevância da discussão reside no tratamento epistemológico inusual das redes sociotecnológicas,abordadas como elementos constituintes dos processos de criação e instituição do social. O procedimento metodológico consistiu na interpretação dos conceitos de legein e de teukhein, aplicados a configurações da comunicação tecnológica mediática, engendrada pelo imaginário de época. O resultado traduziu-se na caracterização das redes sociotecnológicas como expressões do imaginário atinente ao terceiro espírito do capitalismo, segundo perspectiva de Boltanski e Chiapello.

Evolving activity cascades on socio-technological networks

Networks are the substrate on which social contagion propagates, from the growth of social movements to the adoption of innovations. In the complex networks community, it took some time to realize the difference between simple propagation—e.g., the spread of disease—in which a single active node is sufficient to trigger the activation of its neighbors, and complex contagion, in which node activation requires simultaneous exposure to multiple active neighbors. Rooted in the social science literature, complex contagion has settled as the driving mechanism for behavior cascades on social networks. However, our access to digital traces of social interaction reveals, besides and beyond complex contagion, bursty activity patterns, repeated agent activation, and occasionally a form of synchronization under the form of trending topics and hypes. Thus, the threshold model—the paramount example in the tradition of complex contagion—needs to shift from a standpoint in which agents become irreversibly active (“one-off” events), to another in which agents continuously change their state and whose activity shows oscillating patterns. Here, we review a mechanistic model that, within the logic of complex contagion, accounts as well for the temporal evolution of behavior cascades. In it, agents follow the dynamics of integrate-and-fire oscillators. The affordances of the model—and of some recent variations on it—will open a discussion and outlook for future developments.

Performances e produção de efeitos subjetivos no Instagram e no YouTube

We investigate how the subjects with Instagram profiles and YouTube channels, media environments operating as sociotechnological networks, can be regarded as effects produced in performance. We use two master’s thesis produced in previous years in order to highlight the importance of infocommunicative media on the production of subjectivity. We understand that exposing oneself on a network through the body tells us about a communicative phenomenon of individual, collective and institutional assemblages. Due to its dialogical dynamics, we infer that performance puts performers and audiences into relation. The empirical notes mention @jpcaruso profile on Instagram and Nao Faz Sentido! and Vlog do Felipe Neto channels on YouTube. Keywords: images, performance, subjects, Instagram, YouTube.

Producing Space, Tracing Authority: Mapping the 2007 San Diego Wildfires

This article explores the materiality of disaster politics through the practice of mapping during the 2007 wildfires in Southern California. It examines the process of production of two different maps, the maps produced by San Diego County and a popular Google My Map created by local media and academic institutions, in order to explore how an unfolding disaster comes to be understood. This article argues that the interplay between different technological and human entities to produce each map in turn produced different spaces of disaster in ways that challenged priorities of disaster preparedness and response. Specifically, the different mapping practices in 2007 produced different relationships to temporality, boundaries and responsibility, making different aspects of the disaster visible while constructing different threats and definitions of danger. They juxtaposed representational and relational knowledge as well as the value of prevention and demonstration. This article draws on data collected through textual analysis of government and scientific documents as well as interviews and observations of key actors, their mapping practices, and socio-technological networks.