Walled Garden Research Articles

Exploring the impact of paid over-the-top service and mobile network profiles in watching TV content on mobile devices

PurposeThe television (TV) content ecosystem has shifted from traditional broadcasting systems to dedicated content producers and over-the-top (OTT) services. However, less empirical effort has been paid to the actual behaviors of the mobile users who watch TV content when explaining the impact of OTT service and mobile network profiles in watching TV content. This study aims to investigate the impact of gratifications and attitude formed by mobile TV users on actual mobile TV watching behaviors, as well as the moderating impacts of paid OTT service subscriptions and mobile network profiles, based on gratification theory, cognition–affect–behavioral (CAB) framework, sunk cost effect and walled-garden effect.Design/methodology/approachThis study employs the generalized linear model (GLM) with generalized estimating equations (GEE) to test hypothesized relationships. A total of 338 mobile phone users who have been watching TV content using a mobile phone participated in the survey. The moderating variables, 4 types of paid streaming platform subscriptions, were classified based on the walled gardens formed by mobile telecom services.FindingsThe study’s results revealed that obtained gratifications and opportunity constructs substantially influenced a mobile phone user’s attitude and behaviors. Additionally, mobile network profiles and the degree of access to paid platform services played significant moderating roles in the relationship between users’ attitudes and behavior.Originality/valueThis research enriches the existing OTT service literature and is one of the pioneering studies investigating the walled-garden effect’s role in mobile phone users’ actual watching behaviors, offering valuable practical implications for the OTT platform providers.

Intermediaries, mediators and digital advertising’s tensions

ABSTRACT We argue that Latour’s distinction between ‘intermediaries’ and ‘mediators’ captures important facets of tensions in market encounters and in the co-creation of ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ within digital advertising. Drawing upon 110 interviews with 87 practitioners, participation in sector meetings and training courses, and McGowan’s ‘autoethnographic’ experiences, we explore the different forms tensions take in the two main configurations of digital advertising: (1) the ‘open marketplace,’ which is the site of much effort to turn mediators into intermediaries; and (2) ‘walled gardens,’ which increasingly are unequivocally mediators, and which are ‘de-agencing’ advertising’s human practitioners in specific ways (e.g. by making human-guided targeting less attractive and more difficult). De-agencing interacts with current initiatives, especially Apple’s, that partially ‘de-individualize’ advertising’s audiences and reinforce walled gardens’ mediator roles.

Ecologies of friction in digital platform investment

ABSTRACT Digital platforms are underpinned by the ideal of a frictionless market, obscuring the simultaneous practices of market monopolisation and the restriction of consumer choice and movement. This concurrent removal and erection of barriers to participation triggers ecosystemic responses such as individual adaptations and establishing alternative organisations to counter the progression of these ‘walled gardens’. In this article, we contribute to theorising ecologies of friction in the platform economy, drawing on Tsing’s friction in the creation of global connections, Orbach’s friction paradox, and Bateson’s ecological epistemology. Analysing a European short-term rental platform cooperative’s difficult launch, we ask: How do frictions emerge on alternative platforms in the digital economy, and what effect do they have on prefiguring the platform business? Frictions become apparent in platform investment, a complex resource-allocating relationship binding together multiple stakeholders, laden with expectations about the future. We highlight the interconnected frictions of individual investment into platform work, collective investment into platform participation, and resource investment into the business model. These are bound with platform organising, community development, and managing scale as the cooperative tries to prefigure a future platform economy in establishing its current practice. We contribute by extending the concept of ecologies of friction in connecting individual and collective investment with ideas around platform growth. We illustrate how all platform economy actors – participants and platforms alike – are entangled in frictions. We suggest that alternative platforms’ struggles are largely caused by the impossibility of escaping the broader ecosystemic dynamics established by dominant platform imaginaries.

Open Data governance at the Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP): From the Walled Garden to the Arboretum.

Scientific research communities pursue dual imperatives in implementing strategies to share their data. These communities attempt to maximize the accessibility of biomedical data for downstream research use, in furtherance of open science objectives. Simultaneously, such communities safeguard the interests of research participants through data stewardship measures and the integration of suitable risk disclosures to the informed consent process. The Canadian Open Neuroscience Platform (CONP) convened an Ethics and Governance Committee composed of experts in bioethics, neuroethics, and law to develop holistic policy tools, organizational approaches, and technological supports to align the open governance of data with ethical and legal norms. The CONP has adopted novel platform governance methods that favor full data openness, legitimated through the use of robust deidentification processes and informed consent practices. The experience of the CONP is articulated as a potential template for other open science efforts to further build upon. This experience highlights informed consent guidance, deidentification practices, ethicolegal metadata, platform-level norms, and commercialization and publication policies as the principal pillars of a practicable approach to the governance of open data. The governance approach adopted by the CONP stands as a viable model for the broader neuroscience and open science communities to adopt for sharing data in full open access.

Escaping the Walled Garden? User Perspectives of Control in Data Portability for Social Media

Data portability--the capability to transfer one's data from one platform to another--has been described as an important tool for giving individuals more control over their data. It is defined in significant regulations such as the GDPR, and implemented by major online platforms. Unfortunately, there is a lack of research investigating internet users' perceptions and expectations of this technology in specific contexts, which is vital for building effective designs. One particularly important context for studying user perspectives is social media, since it is deeply embedded into daily life and is particularly complex regarding the value and portability of user data. This paper addresses that gap through a survey and interviews of social media users in the United States. We identify current attitudes and practices toward controlling their social media data, and examine participants' impressions about the extent to which data portability may enhance their control. Participants had generally favorable impressions, but had differing opinions about what forms of control are important and the extent to which those could be served by data portability. Based on the results, we propose future directions for improving users' control in the context of social media, such as fine-tuned filtering of data to be transferred and ways to coordinate transfers alongside social contacts.

The Walled Garden of Pedagogy: Leveraging Protection and Risk in Education

This conceptual paper introduces the idea of the walled garden of pedagogy. I will come to delineate it as a desirable and necessary feature of education given that it offers a protective space for pedagogical practice and rehearsal. This paper critiques a previous conceptualisation of a walled garden introduced by unschooling advocate John Holt (in relation to the raising of children), in which such a metaphorical construction is described as a prison. The limitations of Holt’s conceptualisation are used to then build upon the concepts of pedagogical reduction and Yves Chevallard’s notion of “la transposition didactique” to argue that educators in practice inevitably build walled gardens from pedagogical foundations. It is argued, and thus recommended, that it is the gradual introduction of risk that separates the pedagogical walled garden from the conceptualisation of the childhood prison. It is imperative that educators understand their responsibility for leveraging the inevitable protective element and the necessary risk required in education.

«Средневековый BLM»: образ чернолицего в персидской суфийской поэзии

Introduction. The black-faced are mentioned in different Muslim texts — from the Quran to Sufi poems. One can trace not just diverse but rather opposite interpretations, and researchers have to face certain problems when it comes to analyze some related images. Goals. The study attempts an insight into functioning and semantic features inherent to images of the black-faced in Sufi poetry. Materials and methods. The work analyzes a number of classical Persian and Arabic writings, such as The Walled Garden of Truth by Sanai, and others. The employed research methods include those of textual reconstruction, contextual analysis, and descriptive poetics. Results. The paper shows in medieval Islamic culture the black-skinned were often treated not just as second-class individuals, they were sometimes not even viewed as humans. In the Quran, a black face symbolizes disgrace and infidelity. The blacks in Islamic culture were discriminated twice: by skin color and on religious grounds, since most of them were pagans that actively resisted Islamization. This circumstance served a legal rationale for their enslavement. Thus, for many Arab writers a black was a slave, an uncivilized ungodly pagan. These characteristics one can find both in Arabic and Persian literatures. But in Persian Sufism the image of the black-skinned gets revisited. Their outward blackness is the trace of the black light of the divine selfness rather than just an ugly imperfection. The Divine selfness is dark for it cannot be conceived, and is above all human ideas about it. However, the Divine selfness is the being itself, so every existent thing had received being from this Divine source. In this context, Sanai writes that a black-faced is singed by the black light (or fire) of the Divine selfness, and is thus involved with this being. Besides, Sufis tended to view the low social status of the black as a means of liberation from worldly attachments and social connections, each black-skinned individual be thus believed to have united with the One Divine selfness to annihilate his own self (fana). Conclusions. So, the image of the black-faced performs functions similar to those characteristic of a wide layer of characters from other religions in Sufi literature: just like images of infidels, pagans, Zoroastrians, and Christians — this was reinterpreted by Sufi authors in a positive manner.

OpenVNT: An Open Platform for VIS-NIR Technology.

Spectrometers measure diffuse reflectance and create a "molecular fingerprint" of the material under investigation. Ruggedized, small scale devices for "in-field" use cases exist. Such devices might for example be used by companies in the food supply chain for inward inspection of goods. However, their application for the industrial Internet of Things workflows or scientific research is limited due to their proprietary nature. We propose an open platform for visible and near-infrared technology (OpenVNT), an open platform for capturing, transmitting, and analysing spectral measurements. It is built for use in the field, as it is battery-powered and transmits data wireless. To achieve high accuracy, the OpenVNT instrument contains two spectrometers covering a wavelength range of 400-1700 nm. We conducted a study on white grapes to compare the performance of the OpenVNT instrument against the Felix Instruments F750, an established commercial instrument. Using a refractometer as ground truth, we built and validated models to estimate the Brix value. As a quality measure, we used coefficient of determination of the cross-validation (R2CV) between the instrument estimation and ground truth. With 0.94 for the OpenVNT and 0.97 for the F750, a comparable R2CV was achieved for both instruments. OpenVNT matches the performance of commercially available instruments at one tenth of the price. We provide an open bill of materials, building instructions, firmware, and analysis software to enable research and industrial IOT solutions without the limitations of walled garden platforms.

Natural Volatile Organic Compounds (NVOCs) Are Greater and More Diverse in UK Forests Compared with a Public Garden

Forest bathing is based upon a Japanese practice known as Shinrin–Yoku and is a nature-based therapy involving mindful walks through ancient woodland to reduce stress and anxiety. One proposed mechanism behind the effectiveness of Forest bathing is based on the potential mental and physical health benefits of the natural volatile organic compounds (NVOCs) that fill the forest understory. Surprisingly little is known about the concentrations and diversity of plant NVOCs in ambient air particularly in the UK and this study aims to increase that knowledge. Air samples were collected in July 2022 in a UK forest and compared with samples from a walled garden environment. The samples were collected over a 2 h time period and analysed using GC-MS and showed clear differences in the chemical composition of the air. This study revealed NVOCs including limonene, carvone, terpenes, terpenoids and sesquiterpenoids were present within a UK forest but were either not present or present at little to low levels in the control setting of a walled garden. This study also found that the typical 2 h duration of a Forest bathing session was a long enough sampling period to detect these NVOCs, indicating that Forest bathers could benefit from exposure to NVOCs.

Web3 and the future of marketing

The rise of Web3 and related regulations have brought data privacy concerns to the forefront for brands and marketers. With the rise in legislation, the deprecation of third-party cookies and an eye towards transparency, Web3 promises a more open, permissionless online environment. This has implications, from ad targeting to the storage and collection of user data. New concepts including zero-party data, micro-experiences and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) represent trends that are emerging with Web3, but the future is still to be defined. Marketers must understand the implications of the changing data privacy landscape and discover new and creative ways of sourcing and collecting data that follow the new guidelines that are being established by legislators, as well as by walled gardens such as Apple, Meta and Google. To do so, they will have to experiment and innovate. Here, we will explore the evolution of the web from its earliest version into the future. We will also review the different ways marketers currently collect and use customer data. Finally, we will explore new ways for brands and marketers to stay relevant in this evolving digital ecosystem with zero-party data, integrated marketing technology, customer-centric governance and NFTs.

BIO-ACCUMULATION OF HEAVY METALS IN SOME NORTH INDIAN LEAFY VEGETABLES AND QUANTIFICATION OF CONSUMER HEALTH RISK DUE TO THEIR DIETARY INTAKE

In this study bio-accumulated levels of Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni and Pb in seven most popular North Indianleafy vegetables, spinach (Spanacia oleracea), bathua (Chenopodium album), chaulayi (Amranthspinosus), mustard (Brassica nigra), rayi (Brassica juncea), radish leaves (Raphanus sativus) andfenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) collected from local venders were evaluated. The dailyintakes of metals (DIM) through consumption of these leafy vegetables were computed for testedmetals to quantify consumer health risk index (HRI). For the purpose of comparison, vegetablescultivated under ideal conditions in a walled garden were also tested for studied metals. The orderand accumulated levels of metals in leafy vegetables varied as: Pb (2.16-3.16) > Cr (1.54-2.84) > Cu(0.39- 0.94) > Ni (0.38-0.78) > Cd (0.33-0.51). However, the accumulated levels of tested metals invegetables cultivated in the walled garden were much lower and varied as: Pb (1.11-1.46) > Cr (0.66-1.22) > Cu (0.21- 0.42) > Ni (0.22-0.33) > Cd (0.19- 0.29). The order of computed consumers health riskindex (HRI) due to tested metals on dietary intake of studied vegetables collected from localvenders varied as: Pb (229.5 – 335.7) > Cd (140.2 – 216.7) > Ni (8.74- 14.73) > Cu (4.49- 10.82) > Cr(0.473- 0.872).

Online Writing Spaces as “Walled Gardens” in English Language Arts Classrooms

Two central tensions—structure and privacy—emerged when a group of teachers developed Write4Change, an online writing space that connected students in the United States, Italy, and South Korea.

Retail media networks

This study explores large retailers' exchanges of customer data and personalization through targeted advertising on retail media networks. The Retail Media Networks Model is introduced, and a case illustration is provided with examples from the model illustrating personalization/privacy exchanges from the retailers' perspective. Secondary data and primary data featuring interviews with retail media network managers and technology ad platform providers from large retailers in the US and EU. The size of retail media networks is discussed along with other current managerial implications relevant to personalization and data monetization, including, walled gardens, data privacy controls, and public policy issues.

Apple Memories and Automated Memory-Making

In 2016, for the first time Apple introduced what it called »advanced computer vision« to organise and curate users' images. The key selling point for Apple Memories was that all computation would happen inside the user's device, relying on the privacy afforded by Apple's widely used smartphone, the iPhone. This article offers a case study of Apple Memories and its automated memory-making, focusing on three dimensions: the vision of Apple Memories; how this vision gets infrastructured through the An Bionic chip; and how Apple Memories engages users in automated memory-making. This analysis raises important questions regarding privacy and surveillance capitalism as, even if operating on-device, Apple Memories still relies on the datafication of the personal archive via the automation of image analysis (computer vision) and personalisation. Building upon Mackenzie and Munster's (2019) notion of »platform seeing«, I argue that control over the networked image today goes beyond data brokering for behavioural analysis and advertising. Apple Memories' framing of computer vision as an intimate, always-on and personal way of remembering is part of a wider goal of exploiting personal data to bolster user engagement, generate even more data, and ultimately accumulate infrastructural power across Apple's »walled garden« digital ecosystem.

Articulative labor in assembling protest networks in the disjointed WeChatsphere: Rethinking human and non-human agency in digitally mediated activism

Recent scholarship indicates that the rise of networked grassroots protests points to a new mode of organizing activism, connective action. Unlike social movement organization-led collective actions, connective actions are organized by non-human agents – digital networks and platforms – because of the latter’s inherent connectivity in assembling people, information and resources scattered across digital spaces into relatively cohesive protest networks. Yet, not all digital platforms are designed to afford unlimited connections; ‘walled gardens’ and proprietary systems disconnect more than connecting. WeChat, a China-based social media platform, spearheads in engineering an enclosed digital ecosystem, due to China’s political economy. How can protest networks develop in such an insulated environment? This study examines a WeChat-based protest campaign organized mainly by Chinese Americans to illustrate the organizing dynamics on disconnected platforms. Relying on interviews, observation and textual analysis, the findings show that WeChat, instead of acting as a non-human organizer, disorganized the mobilization by impeding the free flow of information and resources. To head off the platform-led barriers, activists performed articulative labor to cross boundaries, bridge gaps and broker resources, which finally articulated the protest network in this digitally disconnective environment. As contemporary digital landscapes become increasingly fragmented, this study not only sheds light on the significant yet hidden articulative labor in networked activism but also prompts us to rethink connective action and other technological deterministic models’ valorization of non-human agency and to reconsider the relationship of human and non-human agency in constituting collective actions and sociality in general.

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Two men, traveling companions, paddle effortlessly with a river's current through long, empty, eventless days; the Government Stationery Office issues a report on wine duties; a Bengali man in London plays a hoax on a British waitress, claiming to have forty wives; children in nonconformist Sunday Schools read A Missionary Alphabet for Little Folk; British administrators eagerly eye Mayan antiquities; a woman in a walled garden reads a Bible in which we can see an inset illustration of another woman, also reading; Queen Victoria insists that envoys from Burma prostrate themselves before her at court; a physiologist, reading, imagines a theory of reading derived from musical patterns. These particular, vibrant, often enigmatic figures, pictured as if forming a collage of Victorian society, were, as you may already have guessed, all jostling together at the inaugural meeting of the North American Victorian Studies Association held in October 2003 at Indiana University in Bloomington. And now they are gathered again, in the volume you are holding in your hands, elbowing past one another to enliven the pages that follow. They certainly provide nothing like a representative portrait of the papers delivered last fall— much less a comprehensive picture of Victorian Britain itself. Other papers, had we room to include them, would fill the scene: two men, lovers, pass the reading physiologist; a menagerie and an imperial garden are in the background; Augusta Webster looks up after finishing the first sonnet of her Mother and Daughter sequence; a London man is poisoned while Silas Wegg is tossed into a garbage cart; a photograph is taken and an art dealer closes his doors; Gladstone gives a speech; Newman delivers a sermon; some men go bathing. We won't delay you for long as you move to mingle with the figures we have collected; a more thorough description of the setting in which they found their animated existence can be found, along with pictures and even video, on the NAVSA website at www.sla.purdue.edu/academic/engl/navsa/. [End Page 191] There you can also learn about the Donald J. Gray Prize for best essay of the year and the award for best paper given by a graduate student at the conference; about the exhibits at the Lilly Library and the Kinsey Institute for Research into Sex, Gender, and Reproduction; about the plenary lectures delivered and the seminars held. But, before we step aside, we should let you know something of our aims in gathering these figures together. The excitement generated by the NAVSA Conference was remarkably open-ended. Panelists delivered a mix of speculative papers on topics just cresting the horizon and revisionist talks addressing issues of traditional importance, and people left the panels in eager conversation. We hoped here to extend that conversation in a new form to those who were not able to come to Bloomington. To this end, we asked three scholars to attend the Conference with an eye toward selecting papers for us to publish in VS. Papers that were especially forward-looking, that made vivid contrastive perspectives on emergent topics, that prosecuted distinctive methods, or that, more simply, exemplified outstanding critical practices were especially welcome. We then invited our three scholars to respond to the papers in print, taking the occasion to make the points they think should be made about what matters most to them, now, in their fields. And here are the results: three collections of papers from last fall's gathering. The first set, organized by Leah Price, concerns the rapidly developing, complexly constituted field of study concerning practices of reading; the second, organized by Lee Sterrenburg, variously engages revisionist interpretations of the Empire, asking us to consider what counts as a significant exception to received historical narratives; and a last set, organized by Philippa Levine, addresses the nature of the archive—unruly, haphazard, and generative—and the uses to which we put it. As an introduction to the figures who floated through the conference corridors at last year's gathering, we hope that the issue also serves as an irresistible invitation to participate in future NAVSA conferences, beginning this coming October in Toronto. Copyright © 2004 The Trustees of Indiana University

Tearing down the 'Walled Gardens' among China’s Tech Giants

Tearing down the 'Walled Gardens' among China’s Tech Giants

The Historic Area of Misri Shah, Lahore

The north eastern side of the historic city of Lahore was always prone to floods, an alluvial area of river Ravi, fertile but destructive. The Mughals built several walls as barriers for the waters of river Ravi, still the area never attracted a permanent settlement. During his reign, Maharaja Ranjit Singh ordered his nobles to plant grand gardens in this area. The land was fertile, water was in abundance and the area had a large number of sweet water wells. Soon the entire area was converted into flourishing walled gardens with numerous trees and grasslands. Nothing remains of these gardens, except some old Banyan, Peepal and Sumbal trees. Traces of the historicity of this area and the existence of these gardens now remain only in archival maps of Lahore. During my research at IAC, my team could identify only three main streets which coincided with the historic streets of this area, and a handful of old surviving trees. Taking these as reference points, we traced the shrines which were historically located within various gardens, usually in proximity of a well, and under old Bunyan trees. Once these references were marked on the current map, the overlaying of old archival maps became possible. This approach showed us the exact locations of the gardens, if they had existed. What we discovered was tragic. Once an area dominated by gardens, was now a scrap metal industry, and a tannery. The entire area became a victim of massive city expansion, inappropriate development schemes, sub-standard implementation and virtually no maintenance. Keywords: History, Misri Shah, Lahore

Vandra Costello. Irish Demesne Landscapes, 1660–1740.

Vandra Costello. <i>Irish Demesne Landscapes, 1660–1740</i>.

Extending the Open Access using Extensions: Freeing Scholarly Communication from the Walled Garden

Extending the Open Access using Extensions: Freeing Scholarly Communication from the Walled Garden