The Lantern Magazine Issue No. 1 Spring 2023

D E F I N E

dear reader,

As an STS think tank, we often encounter the question, "What is STS?" Simply put, Science, Technology, and Society is a rich interdisciplinary field that critically examines the social, historical, and cultural contexts of science and technology. However, this explanation only scratches the surface of the vast and fascinating curiosities that arise in this field. As we continue to study STS, we realize that the field is always in the process of defining itself, both broadly and locally, creating something unique and constantly evolving.

Over the past two years, The Lantern has also been in the process of defining ourselves. We worked through long periods of uncertainty and doubt in a small team, full of questions punctuated by the occasional exclamation mark. Through this process of defining and redefining, we have built a growing community and a foundation. We are proud to present our inaugural issue of the magazine, which showcases the fruits of the labor and passion of our members.

The articles in this issue reflect our efforts to distill the complexity of the natural and social world, exploring the scientific rules that bend, the technological artifacts that shape us back, and the emergence of community and art in the digital frontier. We explore how definitions can shape shift and break apart, inviting our readers to join us in the act of defining and redefining what we think we know. So, come and open the black box with us.

Sincerely,

Nayun Eom

who we are

The Lantern is a student-run, interdisciplinary think tank that investigates the social impact of science and technology to advocate for responsible innovation. The Lantern began at Tufts University in the spring of 2021

As a “Think-and-Action” Tank, The Lantern has a dual mission: (1) to break down critical and complex ideas at the intersection of science, technology, and society (STS) for the general public; (2) to engage students and organizations in a socially responsible path of science and technology.

CONTRIBUTORS

COPY EDITORS.....................NAYUN EOM ......................NIKA LEA TOMICIC

DESIGNERS MADDIE CORTESI (LEAD) NAYUN EOM

PHOTOGRAPHY....................NEWT GORDON-REIN

AUTHORS CLAIRE YUJIE JI

GARLAND

FANG

EOM NIKA LEA TOMICIC NILES LO

LACET-BROWN

VERSIONS OF FAIRNESS

What does it mean for something, such as an algorithm, to be fair? Many disciplines have debated over the nature of fairness, but there is potential overlap between the versions of fairness put forth by different fields of study, namely computer science and philosophy Within the realm of computer science, there are four major forms of mathematical fairness. Unawareness is the simplest form of fairness, and it involves making the algorithm “unaware” of a sensitive characteristic by deleting the data of that characteristic For instance, if you were making a hiring algorithm, and you wished for it to not hire based on race, this form of fairness would involve removing the column of race data from the inputs that were given to the machine This can be beneficial in that the company utilizing the algorithm cannot be accused of direct, intentional bias based on that

characteristic.

The next two types of mathematical fairness are outcome-based. This involves finding some combination of the percentage of false positives and negatives, the overall error rate, and the precision (the accuracy rate of the positives). The first of these formulas is called democratic parity, and it involves separating the data pool into groups based on a specific attribute, such as gender, and making sure that all groups receive a similar proportion of each output, regardless of how many are false positives or false negatives. This gives everyone an equal chance of getting each prediction. For instance, if you have 50 women and 25 men, and you give a positive result to 10 women and 5 men, that would be considered fair, regardless of how many women and men are receiving false positives.

SAM LACET-BROWN

Next, there is equal opportunity: this involves equal precision, where you find the proportion of each group that truly deserves a certain outcome, and then the same percentage of that proportion of the group gets the outcomes for each group For instance, if 50 percent of group A deserves a positive outcome, and 25 percent of group B deserves a positive outcome, then it would be considered fair if 25 percent of group A got a positive outcome and 12.5 percent of group B got a positive outcome This has the benefit of being based on actual group traits

Finally, the last form of mathematical fairness, individual fairness, is the most convoluted to enact. Individual fairness involves “fairness through awareness”basically, all relevant characteristics are accounted for and then people are given a numerical score based on these characteristics. All people with similar scores should get outcomes that are similar. For instance, if you were hiring a teacher, you could look at years of experience, how well they know the curriculum, and how well their students have performed in the past. This is a good way to account for only relevant characteristics.

Putting aside math and computer science, there is another discipline that is heavily invested in discussing forms of fairness In philosophy, there are six major principles of distributive justice, also known as moral fairness. Two of these principles are under the category of “egalitarianism.” The first is strict egalitarianism, in which everyone receives the same level of material goods/services and burdens. The other egalitarian principle is luck egalitarianism, in which one should not end up with a worse distribution of goods due to any ‘brute luck’ (such as genetics) but can be rewarded or penalized for ‘option luck’ (such as buying a lottery ticket)

Outside the realm of egalitarianism are four other distributive principles. The first of these is libertarianism, which is based on the maxim “from each as they chose, to each as they are chosen.” This means there is no ‘just distribution of goods,’ there are simply just actions and the results of those actions A just action is either taking an unclaimed thing without making the conditions of others worse or trading a thing you have previously claimed.

What does it mean for something, such as an algorithm, to be fair?"

Next, there is the Difference Principle, advocated by John Rawls and often called Rawlsian justice Within the Difference Principle, you begin with an equal distribution of goods and then permit inequalities if, and only if, they are to the advantage of the least advantaged in society. For instance, if nobody in society is willing to be a doctor without extra goods, and the least well-off in society would be advantaged by having doctors, then it is permissible to give extra goods to doctors, but only exactly as much as is needed to convince them to work. This is justified by saying everyone would choose this distribution if they were behind a Veil of Ignorance and the only thing they knew was that they themselves were reasonable and rational people. If behind the Veil of Ignorance, you were presented with a society that has more medical doctors at the expense of more income inequality compared with a society that has equal income for everyone but no doctors, if the majority of people would choose the first society, then that’s considered a just distribution.

The third distributive principle I will touch on in this paper is welfare-based principles, specifically utilitarianism

A welfare-based principle is any principle in which the primary moral concern is the welfare of the population. The most common welfare-based principle is utilitarianism, wherein welfare is measured by something similar to happiness. This means the fairest distribution of goods is any distribution in which total happiness is maximized, regardless of who is happy. For instance, both a situation in which one of three people had nearly maximum happiness (ranked as a 9) and a situation in which all three people have a bit of happiness (ranked as a 3) would be judged as equally fair, as they both result in the same amount of total happiness.

The final philosophical theories of distributive justice I wish to touch on are desert-based principles. Desert-based principles suggest that people should be rewarded based on what they deserve The basis for deserving goods is usually linked to the past production of things that raise the standard of living for everyone, either in terms of contribution to the production, effort expended in working on production, or costs incurred as part of the process of production This means, for example, someone who funds an innovation that improved everyone’s life would get significantly more resources than someone who does not.

These are connected in that in both theories, everyone receives exactly the same resources/chances However, democratic parity has issues in that it is insensitive to any actual differences in the groups that may exist. Beyond that, strict egalitarianism has issues with the idea that everyone may be better off if some inequality is allowed due to inequality motivating actions Even with the downsides, there are situations in which these approaches could be useful: for instance, we might say that we want job offers to be distributed equally amongst certain groups. This would help with legal requirements, such as the four-fifth rule which says all groups must be hired at 80% of the rate of the most hired group

I propose that there are parallels between the mathematical definitions of fairness and the corresponding philosophical definition of fairness for each, but also wish to acknowledge the pitfalls of the theories on both mathematical and moral grounds. The first pair of theories (with the mathematical model listed first for all pairings) is democratic parity and strict egalitarianism

The second pairing is unawareness and luck egalitarianism. There is overlap in that the direct ‘brute luck’ actions are simply removed from the analysis, while the ‘option luck’ choices can remain as factors Unawareness is one of the weakest forms of fairness due to the risk of the factor you’ve removed from your analysis being correlated to other factors (like race and zip code), typically due to historical connections. Luck egalitarianism is similarly flawed in that often the line between brute luck and option luck is blurry, and it is thus hard to isolate certain factors and account for solely those factors. If you can truly remove all the relevant factors from your analysis though, a situation such as a parole algorithm could benefit from being unaware of race

Unawareness is the simplest form of fairness."

Thirdly, there is a connection between equal opportunity and desert-based principles in that people get things based on what they deserve. In equal opportunity, this means on average the group receives the true proportions of each result they deserve based on the actual distribution within the group. The flaws in equal opportunity come from the way it can ignore historical disadvantages for certain groups that impact what the actual distribution within the group is, while the main flaw in desert-based principles comes from a similar place: factors over which people have little to no control over will result in differences in their productivity and thus what they are deemed to deserve This could be useful in an algorithm for a store that wants to buy future products only if they are likely to sell.

Finally, individual fairness can be linked to Rawlsian justice based on the idea that the relevant features you consider in making the similarity scores could be narrow to start with, and then other things could be factored in if including them was to the benefit of the least well-off. The biggest criticism of individual fairness is that it is hard to exactly define what characteristics are relevant for the individual similarity scores, and it is even harder to make sure those characteristics aren’t a proxy for other, irrelevant traits.

Rawlsian justice also has its critics, who often point out that personal responsibility is not emphasized much in Rawlsian justice This could still be useful in a situation such as allocating welfare you want similar people to receive similar benefits, without penalizing people for irrelevant traits.

On the subject of fairness, computer science definitions and philosophical definitions are not at odds with each other. However, finding a singular best mathematical definition of fairness for algorithms may be an intractable problem due to not having found a singular definition of fairness to agree on philosophically. Just like differing philosophies are held by various people at different times, distinct mathematical approaches to fairness will be needed in a variety of circumstances

NATURAL SELECTION AS A MECHANISM FOR EVOLUTION

GABBY GARLAND

Evolution and natural selection are basic principles that uphold modern day biology and genetics. There have been debates about how to qualify evolution with implications for our understanding of our genetic lineage. Qualifying evolution as a mechanism allows for nuance when describing a complex, ever changing world. Darwin’s proposal of evolution through natural selection is ultimately a mechanism of evolution. The concept of a mechanism has varied over the years. While there is room for interpretation, a mechanism can be defined as “an arrangement of parts that produces a more complex set of effects in a whole system in a regular way.” Natural selection is a causal mechanism for evolution and can be broken down into several parts, which each have specific

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

effects on the system as a whole. Godfrey-Smith stipulates that while mechanisms are parts of a whole system, these parts do not necessarily add up to the system as a whole. Natural selection as a mechanism does not follow reductionism, the theory that all systems can be broken down into smaller parts that precisely add up to the larger system. Yet, it is nevertheless a mechanism because of its parts and these parts' capacity to induce the function of the evolutionary system as a whole.

Natural selection requires three main components to properly occur: variation, the struggle for existence, and inheritance. Variation is the principle that there will be a wide variety of diversity across different breeds and types of animals, which through the process of reproduction, yields more variation. The struggle for existence is the principle that there will always be competition for resources because demand outweighs supply. There are not enough resources to sustain all living things therefore organisms must compete with each other to reproduce and survive. Reproduction is the most important aspect of survival because surviving is useless if one cannot continue the lineage by producing offspring. Finally, inheritance is necessary for natural selection to occur. Inheritance is the process of any slight advantage increasing its representation in the next variation. Lineage branches of animals and organisms with traits favorable for survival will be more likely to reproduce and pass these traits on to the next generation and variation.

Understanding the three main components of natural selection is vital to demonstrate that natural selection is not a law. Laws are defined as necessary and repeated. While natural selection may be a necessity on this planet, in this environment, it may not be the case under different circumstances. Natural selection depends on the presence of variance, inheritance, and competition. In an environment with resources that replenish faster than organisms reproduce, there may be no competition. Therefore, species may not be under such scrutiny to reproduce. Natural selection would not be relevant or possible in selection would not be relevant or possible in a different environment. While the evolution and development of a set of species will occur, it will not be via the mechanism of natural selection because the three necessary parts are not present. Therefore, natural selection is contingent upon the presence of these three parts and may not occur under different circumstances so it cannot be a law.

Natural selection requires three main components to properly occur: variation, the struggle for existence, and inheritance."

The Earth's ecosystem is complex and imperfectly organized, yet natural selection is best qualified as a mechanism. It is too contingent to be a law and too imperfect to be a model."

Furthermore, natural selection is also not a model. Models are idealized representations, sometimes physical, of patterns and events that occur in the real world. Models can be used to predict or explain certain phenomena or systems. Natural selection can be modeled but it is not a model. One example of this is Darwin’s Tree of Life, which visually represents how natural selection works using eleven species in a single genus and tracking their lineages. Some species die out after only a few generations whereas others in this model, like species A, survive for several thousand. Natural selection can be modeled into a variety of different models and representations and because of this capacity to be modeled, it is not inherently a model.

Therefore, as natural selection is not a model nor a law, it must be a mechanism. Beyond being comprised of three parts, the process of natural selection is a resilient and regular pattern that holds across many situations (Godfrey-Smith, 12), and the individual occurrences of natural selection within generations of specific species, combined, affect the evolutionary system as a whole. The repetition of natural selection amongst a wide variety of species, over an extended period of time, continually affects the possible outcomes for future generations.

Additionally, Darwin uses causal language in describing how natural selection occurs. According to GodfreySmith, mechanisms use causal descriptions to describe how “one event produces another.” (Godfrey-Smith, 16) In The Origin of Species, Darwin writes in a cause-andeffect manner to describe the process of natural selection: “Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight, and from whatever cause proceeding, if it is in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual and will generally be inherited by its offspring” (Darwin, 52). Using language such as "will

tend to” and “will generally be inherited by” indicates that natural selection is a chain of causally significant events. A specific species is affected by limited resources and competition with other species, which influences which traits are beneficial and tend to be passed down, which in turn leads to certain varieties of the species dying off. Darwin proceeds to write that the “offspring thus have a better chance of surviving…” (Darwin, 52). Natural selection as a mechanism helps to explain the incredibly complex ecosystem of plants and animals interacting with each other in a changing environment and how they are impacted by certain events, which in turn leads them to adapt which affects the outcomes of future generations.

Mechanisms are typically best applied to organized systems. The Earth's ecosystem is complex and imperfectly organized, yet natural selection is best qualified as a mechanism. It is too contingent to be a law and too imperfect to be a model. Much of the language used to describe the process of natural selection is cause and effect based, strongly indicating that natural selection is a mechanism. The process of natural selection can also be broken down into different necessary principles, perhaps laws, such as variance, inheritance, and natural selection to further explain the causes and effects on a more nuanced level. Natural selection is ultimately a complex, integrated system of smaller mechanisms and laws that can be described as a mechanism of a larger system of evolution.

REFERENCES

Godfrey-Smith, P (2014) Philosophy of biology Princeton University Press

Darwin, C (1859) On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life John Murray

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

INTERVIEWING PROFESSOR MICHELLE SPEKTOR

Professor Michelle Spektor is an STS lecturer specializing in surveillance and information technologies, particularly biometric identification systems. Professor Spektor is currently teaching Technology in the Surveillance Society and leading the STS Reading Lab on Life.

Nika Lea Tomicic: What does STS mean to you, and how does this interdisciplinary framework influence your research?

Michelle Spektor: So for me, STS is the study of how science and technology influence society, and how society influences science and technology. Being what it is, STS is a really broad field, which is pretty cool. You end up with lots of different research focused under the same banner of questions and interests about the social dimensions of science and tech, and everyone gets to come together under these bigger questions. So even though my work focuses more on a specific set of technologies, like biometrics, and is a bit more historical in its focusalthough I do look at some more contemporary things - it's neat for me to be drawing from the same broader toolkit as people who are working on a variety of topics. That does influence my work in a few ways because it can be really tempting to think about histories of technology or histories of science or histories of expert knowledge as being separate from each other. But when you put all of us together in a room, we can start to find connections between these different subject areas. Everyone has a bit of a different take on what STS is, how one does STS, and what is an STS research project. So for me, I'm personally really committed to drawing on a variety of methods, whether that's going to the archive, interviewing people, doing participant observation, or observing biometric systems as they work in context

PHOTO: MICHELLE SPEKTOR

But grounding all of that with the central questions about how these technologies are shaping social life, how our social world is shaping the technologies, and what kinds of politics the technologies have that reorder life as we know it.

NLT: How did your background in studying biometric systems influence your course, “Technology in Surveillance Society”? What aspects of surveillance did you insist on including, and what did you leave out?

MS: When I was designing this class, something that I wanted to think a lot about was what technology does in the context of surveillance. Is surveillance entirely dependent on it? Does technological innovation just inevitably mean we're going to be living in a more surveillance world? When you read general news and magazines or just the way people talk about surveillance, people kind of blame it on technology. As though technology caused it. And while some of that might be true, the class opens up whether there is more to it. So, it was really important to think about surveillance less as a set of different kinds of technologies and more as different kinds of techniques of ordering, controlling, and intervening in populations And then we can think a lot about how humans were doing these kinds of things before we had high-tech tools And how the creation, design, and implementation of new technology re-inscribed these much older practices or created new ones for new possibilities. The other thing that I really wanted to make sure of was putting the surveillance developments in a global context. I think that especially since we are living in the United States and at a US university in proximity to the Boston tech hub, it is important to challenge preconceived notions that there's a global concentration of surveillance technologies in North America and Europe that then flows out to everywhere else in the world. Instead, there becomes a coalescence of different global developments historically and in the contemporary period.

Global context doesn't get communicated a lot in discourses or courses on surveillance. I've long been working on topics related to surveillance. Most of my interests relate to the state as the center of power and surveiller of populations, and for what kinds of purposes states use surveillance techniques and technologies I also have some personal interest in this topic as my family comes from the former USSR, and my dad is from Ukraine and emigrated here in the 70s as a refugee So I've always been pretty attuned to thinking about the contingency of what kinds of surveillance societies we live in It's very interesting to grow up with family stories about encounters with the KGB. I think a lot about how techniques and technologies of identification and surveillance relate to questions of belonging, matters of immigration, societal exclusion, and inclusion.

NLT: What is a surprising fact about biometric systems that you have learned in your research and experience?

MS: One of the things about biometrics that I still find surprising, even though I know that it's a feature of any technology, is how the same set of data can be used for so many different purposes. It can be used to classify people based on race. It can be used to discriminate. It can be used to exonerate someone who has been wrongly accused. It can be used to identify the dead or collect public health information. But also to surveil whole populations. If a state is collecting biometric data, it might be a demarcator of belonging and inclusion in the national system, or it can be a demarcator of non-citizenship and exclusion.

Unawareness is the simplest form of fairness."

It was really important to think about surveillance less as a set of different kinds of technologies and more as different kinds of techniques of ordering, controlling, and intervening in populations."

NLT: What are some everyday changes you have made as a result of studying surveillance? For instance, do you consciously refuse to use certain platforms or deny all cookies?

MS: Well, I do not include my fingerprints or my facial data on my phone I feel like I'm very aware of opportunities to opt out of most systems, even if it's not being made obvious I tend to be pretty cautious about sharing on social media too, especially if it's content that even if I don't tag it, it's obvious that I'm in some particular place. And I like disabling cookies generally. And with the quantified self type apps, I’ve never downloaded the ones that collect biometric information. Similarly, I tend to avoid booking flights, a hotel, medical appointments, or anything else through a third party. I don't see why these other entities should have my data. And it almost feels like a trick that, of course, there's a certain convenience that comes along with having these apps, but also how much more convenient is it really when I could just book directly with the airline or a doctor

NLT: For students new to STS, what are some surveillance-related recommendations for books and other forms of media that come to mind?

MS: Well, I'll talk a little more about The File because that's my favorite, and it's a bit under the radar First, it's not fiction and not explicitly intended for an academic audience, but for academic purposes, you can get a lot out of that book It’s an opportunity to compare this historian’s own archive of his identity and time spent as a student in East Germany and the account in the file the Stasi kept on him. I think it really foregrounds the work that surveillance is doing, which is creating an identity for people that is not necessarily the same as the ones that they have for themselves. And then using that as a tool for intervening in people's lives to fortify or create social and political control. In the second half of this book, the author does an oral history of what it was like to be an informant of the Stasi apparatus by interviewing the people who informed on him for the Stasi This also walks through the social relations surveilla that The intensive the peop people another have fou Simone tools, it the Pan of survei in its br being d during t height o is that it systems margina from t highligh discrimi racism technolo is built everything we know, our whole framework of

surveillance is steeped in that, what do we do about it? I feel kind of similarly about Sengoopta’s Imprint of the Raj which discussed the creation of fingerprinting in colonial India. He was one of the first people to show that fingerprinting was not just a European and North American export, as most people assume it was. In a very accessible way, he put on the map this question of why so much of the enterprise of surveillance itself originates in imperialism. Being able to identify a population in order to subjugate them and control them and their land was part and parcel of the colonial project. It brings to the floor questions about what is the surveillance project, what is actually happening with these systems, and who are these technologies benefiting and harming And, it brings up the very disturbing prospect that newer biometric technologies are re-inscribing some of the same forms of marginalization and marginalizing the same populations locally, nationally, and globally. Even when we apply them to new settings. All of these books remind us of the contingency of data and how it can be used for so many different purposes.

Photo:NewtGordon-Rein

WHY MORE TECHNOLOGY ISN’T ALWAYS THE BEST SOLUTION

NILES LO

In 2017, after Hurricane Maria swept through and ravaged much of Puerto Rico in what many consider to be the worst natural disaster on record for the archipelago, Governor Ricardo Rosselló and the Puerto Rican government faced an unexpected dilemma. The country was in desperate need of funding to assist in rebuilding the infrastructure damaged by the hurricane, but the government was still recovering from a self-inflicted financial crisis that prevented them from quickly assisting its population.

So, when pioneers of cryptocurrencies offered to step in and help the government with funding, Governor Rosselló quickly agreed. Puerto Rico had demonstrated a willingness to take economic risks in the pursuit of entrepreneurship. This willingness to adopt such a volatile and foreign technology likely stems from the belief that “every social problem has a technological solution - via programs based on blockchain and cryptocurrencies” [1]. To the residents of Puerto Rico, this early expansion of crypto was an exciting opportunity to change the fundamental structures of their economy, in ways that would take the power out of their government's hands. The shift from dollars to Bitcoin enabled a more efficient, transparent charity system that prevented any form of siphoning that may normally occur during disaster recovery. Additionally, many crypto evangelists hoped to demonstrate the currency’s ability to create a path to prosperity, holding workshops and how-tos for the locals to become adjusted to the new monetary system. This implementation of blockchain technology carried with it the notion of libertarianism and individualism, aimed at escaping government capital controls.

However, this cryptocurrency movement was not purely philanthropic. For many of the settlers that moved to Puerto Rico during this time period, there were internal financial incentives as well. The combination of Acts 20, 22, and 60 that were passed in Puerto Rico allowed for “people who move[d] to the island [to] benefit from a reduction of income taxes on long-term capital gains, dividends, interest and revenues from their services” [2]. Effectively, by moving a cryptocurrency business to Puerto Rico and setting up their services on the island, a tax haven could be achieved that would allow these entrepreneurs to keep much of their profits. Furthermore, the influx of new settlers in Puerto Rico had negative ramifications completely separate from the technology that they brought.

REFERENCES

[1] Ottenhof, Luke “Crypto-Colonialists Use the Most Vulnerable People in the World as Guinea Pigs ” VICE, 29 Jun 2021, http://www vice com/en/article/wx5zz9/crypto-colonialists-use-the-most-vulnerable-people-in-the-world-as-guinea-pigs

[2] Marcos, Coral M., and Patricia Mazzei. “The Rush for a Slice of Paradise in Puerto Rico.” The New York Times, 31 Jan. 2022, https://www nytimes com/2022/01/31/us/puerto-rico-gentrification html

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

Settlers frequently purchased local properties using Bitcoin, renovated them, and converted them into vacation rentals. This practice led to increased demand for housing, resulting in higher rents and housing prices, which ultimately displaced native Puerto Ricans, leading to a loss of culture and vibrancy in their cities. This movement of settlers descending upon a distraught country and implementing a cryptocurrency gained the fitting label of “cryptocolonialism,” a term that seems to fully envelop the treacherous side of this technology.

Even with the upsides of cryptocurrency, the actual implementation of the technology still left a lot to be desired. The simplest of which is the reliance that cryptocurrency has on the internet, which in many rural areas is not a given. In fact, when faced with a divide like this, implementing crypto can actually create a deeper issue than the problems it's meant to be solved since it now separates those that are connected to the internet from those that are not. The power demands of Bitcoin are also not trivial. One Bitcoin transaction consumes 215 KWh, which is enough power to supply many households on the island. And while educational material and courses are being put in place across the country, perhaps the biggest downside is that many times when implementing crypto as a local currency, the locals have little actual knowledge of the full economic situation and will likely be excluded from the benefits that it brings to the local economy.

Ultimately, while cryptocurrency may be a temporary solution for a much deeper issue of economic malpractice, it is impossible to ignore the negative ramifications that the technology carries with it. The cost of the infrastructure necessary to ensure that all citizens are able to equitably access the positives of blockchain implementation seems to outweigh any sort of trickle-down economic result that the local people actually benefit from.

This implementation of blockchain technology carried with it the notion of libertarianism and individualism, aimed at escaping government capital controls. However, this cryptocurrency movement was not purely philanthropic."

Surveillance at Your Doorstep

A failed Shark Tank gadget is bought by Amazon, creating an empire of millions of homeowners reliant on the Ring Doorbell for the comfort of surveillance. This device records the visitor using motion activation from a button being pressed, connects to a user’s phone, and stores footage in the cloud. With such a vigilant form of surveillance available to any consumer willing to cough up a few hundred dollars, Ring has revolutionized the idea of home security.

Within a socio-technical network of neighbors, law enforcement, and the individual, a Ring Doorbell creates an environment of civilian surveillance in the name of ineffective crime reduction tactics. Due to its design and implementation, Ring’s backdoor for institutions to access recordings reinforces fear-mongering politics that weave in Orwellian surveillance, visualization of the “other,” and a surveillant assemblage.

NIKA LEA TOMICIC

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

Through this framework, private footage is stored in an unsafe cloud, can be handed over to the police, the body is criminalized, and later an arrest can be posted online as a success story to sell more Rings.

The Ring Doorbell deploys Gary Marx’s techno-fallacy “If you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to hide” to infringe upon privacy in the name of fighting crime (Marx, 28). By videotaping any movement within the designated field of vision, Ring’s presence tramples over consent in neighborhoods. To do this, the company injects footage from customers into the mainstream to display successful crime deterrence to control the narrative. Through “fear-mongering advertising and information campaigns to drum up sales,” millions of Ring owners can look away from infringements for their exacerbated fears to be comforted (Stanley). With this heightened sense of anxiety, consumers may reason that someone’s hesitation to be filmed probably means they are being deviant. Politically, this allows for the technology to relate to a form of order based on constant fearful watching of the “other,” even if it puts data and humans at risk. The othering of community members for profitable means and law enforcement intrusion into private space has its political implications in imagining a dangerous society.

An Orwellian comparison can be drawn with Big Brother, the leader of political totalitarianism in Nineteen Eighty-Four, whose symbolism relates to Ring’s societal impact. With “no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment,” Big Brother’s posters and pervading presence redefine what it means to be “watched” (Orwell, 5). The idea of watching in a modern context is characterized by Ring’s connection to authorities that criminalize the watched for their own motivations. The backdoor for law enforcement is embedded in Ring providing “information to government entities if the company believes that an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person, such as a kidnapping or an attempted murder” has occurred, requiring “disclosure without delay” (Guardian). The key to this backdoor’s effectiveness is “disclosure without delay,” prompting questions of what Ring deems an emergency enough to sidestep consent.

REFERENCES

Acello, Richard. “Amazon's Ring Doorbell Cameras May Help Deter Package Thefts, but Critics Worry about Overreach.” ABA Journal, 1 Apr. 2020, https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/ar ticle/amazons-ring-doorbell-camerasmay-help-deter-package-thefts-andother-crimes-but-critics-worry-aboutoverreach.

Bridges, Lauren. “Amazon's Ring Is the Largest Civilian Surveillance Network the US Has Ever Seen | Lauren Bridges.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 18 May 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/commentis free/2021/may/18/amazon-ring-largestcivilian-surveillance-network-us.

Finn, Jonathan. “Picturing the Criminal: Photography and Criminality in the Nineteenth Century.” Capturing the Criminal Image: From Mug Shot to Surveillance Society, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN, 2009, pp. 1–30.

Guardian Staff and Agency. “Amazon Gave Ring Doorbell Videos to US Police 11 Times without Permission.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 July 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/technology /2022/jul/13/amazon-ring-doorbell-videospolice-11-times-without-permission.

Even if the company insists on a refusal to share footage freely, in 2022, Ring disclosed 11 videos to authorities without homeowner permission thanks to this “emergency provision” (Guardian). As a result, Ring reserves the right to not only hand over any footage but incorporate the authorities’ interests into their device’s usage. Through this, Big Brother’s perfect gadget of the modern age creates a suspicion-building environment ripe for invasive access into consumers’ private lives whenever the company sees fit.

In order to create an ominous “other” that a homeowner needs to be protected from, Ring uses tools of visualization to criminalize the body. As the authors Lucas Introna and David Wood put it, “in any western society, if one would somehow cover, or…disguise one’s face, then there is almost an immediate assumption of guilt” (Introna and Wood, 178). With technology as facially conscious as a doorbell monitor, the accompanying footage is only useful when a visitor’s face can be identified. The role of the camera allows for the unknown body on one’s private property to be othered and encourages “documentation, classification, and regulation” through surveillance (Finn, 6).

As a camera acting as a politicizing force, Ring takes the issue a step further with police insertion that can regulate what an authority sees as unfavorable behavior. An important example is the Neighbors App, which is connected to Ring and allows homeowners to post footage for their surrounding community of users. This amenity is used by law enforcement in various ways, from “viewing and commenting on public posts… to asking for help on active investigations by submitting requests for video recordings” (Siminoff). With the social aspect of collectively visualizing the threatening “other” in the neighborhood, the Neighbors App heightens fear and allows authorities to directly criminalize what occurs in private spaces. Because of this political intrusion, millions of Americans have signed over the private space of both their own property and the bodies of any nearby subjects with the same justification of Marx’s techno-fallacy asserting privacy as hidden criminality.

REFERENCES. CON'T.

Haggerty, Kevin D., and Richard V. Ericson. “The Surveillant Assemblage.” The British Journal of Sociology, vol. 51, no. 4, 2000, pp. 605–622., https://doi.org/10.1080/00071310020015280.

Harris, Mark. “Video Doorbell Firm Ring Says Its Devices Slash Crime-but the Evidence Looks Flimsy.” MIT Technology Review, MIT Technology Review, 2 Apr. 2020, https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/10 /19/103922/video-doorbell-firm-ring-says-itsdevices-slash-crimebut-the-evidence-looksflimsy/

Introna, Lucas, and David Wood “Picturing Algorithmic Surveillance: The Politics of Facial Recognition Systems ” Surveillance & Society, vol 2, no 2/3, 2002, https://doi org/10 24908/ss v2i2/3 3373

Karenthecamera “Karenthecamera on Instagram: ‘I Always Enjoy Doing My Drugs at Karen's Place it's so Glamorous and Fun to Stand on Her Sidewalk in the Cold and Use I Would like to Thank Society for Allowing Me to Reach My Goal of Using in Public with Zero Consequences Hey Little Kids check Me out!" ” Instagram, 26 Feb 2023, https://www instagram com/p/CpITz2ogSUb /?hl=en

Marx, Gary “Some Information Age TechnoFallacies ” Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, vol 11, no 1, 2003, pp 25–31 , https://doi org/10 1111/14685973 1101005

“Ring Nation TV Series Hosted by Wanda Sykes: Submit Your Clips ” Ring Nation Television, 21 Oct 2022, https://ringnation com/

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

Furthermore, this documentation of the footage is on Amazon’s terms, as Ring lets homeowners “view live video but do[es] not let them review, share, or save videos unless they get a cloud subscription.” (Stanley). Through this, Ring’s alert of “someone is at your front door” prompts suspicion from the homeowner, and they need to be reassured of a home’s safety with video (Support Center). By relying on a corporation to monitor one’s property, surveillance is out of the hands of a single homeowner and into the possession of Amazon and potentially law enforcement. As the ACLU puts it, “once you store that video in the cloud, you reduce your own physical and legal control over your camera and increase the power of companies and government” (Stanley). As a result, visualization for the sake of reassurance is taken a step further with the design of the Ring and how it seeks to own the private footage. Most importantly, this creates an environment where a loss of trust in neighbors becomes so powerful, consumers’ fears are able to outweigh any privacy concerns.

REFERENCES. CON'T.

Rubin, Ben Fox. “Amazon's Ring Takes Heat for Considering Facial Recognition for Its Video Doorbells.” CNET, 14 Dec. 2018, https://www.cnet.com/home/smarthome/amazons-ring-takes-heat-forconsidering-facial-recognition-for-itsvideo-doorbells/.

Siminoff, Jamie. “Working Together for Safer Neighborhoods: Introducing the Neighbors Active Law Enforcement Map.” The Ring Blog, 20 May 2022, https://blog.ring.com/2019/08/28/workingtogether-for-safer-neighborhoodsintroducing-the-neighbors-active-lawenforcement-map/.

Stanley, Jay. “Should You Buy a Ring Doorbell Camera?: ACLU.” American Civil Liberties Union, 27 Feb. 2023, https://www.aclu.org/news/privacytechnology/should-you-buy-ring-doorbellcamera.

Support Center. “Understanding Alerts for Ring and Motion Events – Ring Help.” Ring Support, https://support.ring.com/hc/enau/articles/210052646-Understandingalerts-for-Ring-and-Motion-Events.

A worrying pathway for Ring visualization is the recent filing of several patents for facial recognition, hinting at increased politicization of the technology. With the recent two patents highlighting a feature that could “recognize ‘suspicious’ people in a neighborhood and then automatically alert law enforcement,” one can only begin to grasp the societal impact of such a device (Rubin). The patent’s technology would compare Ring footage with police database images of the suspect, creating an algorithmic surveillance system resting upon visualization techniques. With Introna and Wood’s research, this potential avenue would rest upon “template-based algorithms” as it compares an image from the police’s dataset, causing issues of minorities deviating from the “standard” so their faces become easier to single out (Introna and Wood, 186). Since Ring already has millions of cameras installed with a built-in backdoor to authorities’ involvement, this platform serves as the perfect playground for flawed facial recognition software to grow. This politically reinforces an unsafe neighborhood narrative requiring the purchase of a camera to identify the unknown “other,” and then share with authorities private access for a flawed innovation to criminalize the body.

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

More telling is the relationship between Ring and the US police, which contributes to Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson’s view of this authority’s hunt for “ways to integrate their different computer systems and databases” (Haggerty and Ericson, 610). With a gadget as widespread as Ring, the police can sidestep homeowner complaints through tactics that will better their own surveillance systems in the name of fighting crime. In order to create a more fluid surveillant assemblage, the two institutions have tied together so effectively that currently over “one in 10” departments have data contracts with Ring (Bridges). These two actors use these deals to enact giveaways and discount products with the fine print of institutional overreach and even a surrendering of footage. As the ACLU puts it, this creation of a “de facto sales force” is a “betrayal of police departments’ duty to serve the public first” (Stanley). To boost these snake-oil tactics, some police departments have even trained officers “on how to get users to agree to turn over the footage” (Stanley). The effect becomes a network reliant on multiple institutions and unable to be dismantled from only the corporation’s side, as the othering politics driving Ring Doorbells serve multiple political interests from the state as well.

It is important to note that the effectiveness of this technology is speculative and ultimately has not been proven. According to MIT Technology Review, Ring’s statistics of crime reduction are not strong enough to justify the technology’s overreach into civil liberties, and independent studies could not prove a correlation between increased Ring doorbells and safer neighborhoods (Harris). Regardless, Ring insists on its crime reduction capacity and uses this to build a massively successful brand built on reassuring the paranoid homeowner.

The complex socio-technical network embedded in the Ring Doorbell persists in a fabricated environment that is threatened by an “other” so pervasive that a backdoor to authorities is justified by fearful consumers. Private footage is stored in an unsafe cloud by Amazon and can be handed over to the police to compare with databases and potentially facial recognition, the body is criminalized, then later posted online as a success story to sell even more Rings.

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

LIVING BY THE CODE:

COVID Era Surveillance Testing

In 2021, my mother in China was invited as a speaker at the “Industrial Revolution 4.0” conference in Beijing, but she could not take the plane due to health issues. When she went to the train station, her phone’s Health Code app was green, approving her for travel. Wenzhou, the city she lives in, had no Covid-19 cases and she had not left the city in weeks. Then suddenly, her app turned yellow upon her arrival in Beijing, flagging her as medium risk because the train went past a city that had several Covid-19 cases on the way to Beijing. Train station security asked her to book a separate hotel for quarantine and she could not resist. While the 1984 society by Orwell appeared to be unrealistically bizarre for the real world, we seem to observe a more Orwellian surveilled society after the Covid-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, the penetration of personal data and privacy keeps going by pacifying the public in the name of public health and seemingly neutrality of the technology when it is, in fact, political.

Health Code is a digital pass used in China to track individuals’ possible exposure to Covid19. Everyone in China, including tourists, had

to download it from 2020 to 2022. The app was used in all aspects of society such as stores, restaurants, and public transportation. Users had to fill out personal information and a health questionnaire to receive a color code indicating their health containment policy. By usage, the users were required to consent to permission to share personal information, GPS data, and camera allowance. The government developed an algorithm that defined the color code indicating a different health containment policy. The government’s so-called “community workers” enforced the Health Code operation by strictly enforcing regular scans of Health Code and group quarantines, and the policy department issued heavy punishments for violators.

From a socio-technical perspective, Health Code exemplifies a non-neutral technology because it is a tool for government control over the public. I argue that Health Code is a surveillance technology that enforces preexisting inequality and further centralizes power through data assemblage and classification. Data assemblage is defined as digitalization of one’s physical body and social

KAYLA FANG

involvement thanks to cross-institutional data sharing (Ericson and Haggerty, 606).

Classification has both its literal meaning of sorting people based on certain categories and its regulatory meaning of the differentiating actions after sorting.

Health Code's data assemblage centralizes power, provides authorities with precise data, and enhances monitoring and regulation of individual behavior. Health Code uses a new surveillance paradigm called “data assemblage” that abstracts human bodies and divides them into discrete streams of data (Ericson and Haggerty, 2000). This data is integrated into a system of dominance subject to scrutiny and intervention. Health Code collects data from non-institutional companies and state-owned companies, including Cellphone GPS, public transportation records, CCTV, and social ID numbers, to generate a user profile. Health Code transcribes the human body into a pure data representation, creating a “data double” that is reconstructed based on the government's definition. While the data itself may be neutral, the representation is based on interpretation by the government, giving it the power to rationalize intervention and discriminate among populations. Health Code's intention was originally to serve one purpose but now finds other uses, such as hindering individuals from participating in protests by unexpectedly changing their QR code to red. The government owns the data assemblage and the power of interpretation, enabling further concentration of power in the name of public health.

Health Code also contributes to further reinforcing pre-existing inequality and the centralization of power. The Health Code algorithm favors powerful individuals and disadvantages marginalized groups, as it prioritizes certain features that may exclude

minorities. For example, foreigners who don't speak Mandarin were deprived of a voice and mobility rights, while the color code classification disregards individuals who have multiple part-time jobs or non-stationary work patterns. Another case disempowers the lower-middle class. The color code system assumes a stationary work environment that overlooks those who work multiple part-time jobs or engage in physical interactions like package delivery drivers. According to Bowker and Star, these individuals' interests are compromised to "make the classification converge" (2000), leaving them as outliers. The system adds another layer of burden to their already disadvantaged position, requiring them to socially reclassify or fit themselves in.

In conclusion, the Health Code surveillance technology normalizes the political intentions of the Chinese government. While it was initially introduced under the guise of promoting public health, it has now infiltrated every aspect of social life through data assemblage and serves as an infrastructure by classifying people based on their contagious risk to maintain public safety. The intensifying status quo of data assemblage reinforces the state’s governance over their citizens and induces more prejudices and differentiation among the citizens that deteriorates the issue of equality. However, both the data assemblage and classification are not neutral, but instead reinforce the government's regulation over the public and intensify preexisting inequalities.

REFERENCES

Haggerty, K. D., & Ericson, R. V. (2000). The surveillant assemblage. The British Journal of Sociology, 51(4), 605–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/00071310020015280

Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (2000). Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/6352.001.0001

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

The Realm of Stigmatization:

Online Spaces of Gendered Emotions in Chinese Idol Culture

Online platforms are a new medium through which communities are built. These novel spaces can recreate and challenge age-old dichotomies. Online platforms are a breeding ground for gendered emotions upon which mainstream/subculture division becomes intensely contested. In this article, I use the Chinese idol culture as an example to show how online communities come to shape their unique in-group dynamics.

Under the profound influence of Japanese and South Korean idol culture in the past decade, China has experienced the extraordinary popularity of its own homegrown idol culture in which the physical attractiveness and personality traits of an entertainer (mostly male) are peculiarly advertised to induce emotional arousal and affectionate intimacy in female-dominated fan bases. The Chinese idol culture breaks the traditional “private sphere/public sphere dichotomization of woman/man” (Shields, p. 94) by allowing female consumers to exercise ambition-driven social power and male idols to retreat to the adoption of milder expressions of emotion.

Hence, the gender role reversal in the emotional realm drives stigmatization against the idol culture as a result of mainstream society’s longtime adherence to the traditional belief of cisgender male superiority and female inferiority.

However, instead of constructing a collective identity that showcases the solidarity of this marginalized online community against social stigma, online fan bases – the major force in the popularization of idol culture – are more interested in presenting their own group image in a positive light at the expense of other online fan bases’ bitter animosity.

CLAIRE YUJIE JI

Against the backdrop of a social realm that upholds traditional gender norms, the recurrent process of emotionalization –marked by an online fan base’s imperative need to cultivate group conformity and engage in regular inter-group competitions – further marginalizes the Chinese idol culture from mainstream society that seeks to reinforce gender-based emotional stereotypes.

The upsurge of Chinese idol culture in the recent decade has revisited the duality between the public sphere and the private sphere. As the coiner of two terms that reflect a categorical attempt to systematically explain the complex dynamic between interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, Jürgen Habermas (1997) defines the public sphere as a domain of social life where public opinions are formed and freely exchanged, and the private sphere as an introspective place where private interests are regularly deliberated. Although Habermas originally constructed this theory of the public/private sphere to explain discursive interactions in the realm of political democracy, scholars have advanced the basic ideas of his theory to interpret gender dynamics, especially with regard to emotional stereotypes. For instance, Stephanie A. Shields’ complementarity principle dictates that the traits, strengths, and weaknesses of women are to be compensated for or enhanced by those of men (p. 93). If men are socialized to express masculine emotions of ambition and aggression, then women are expected to demonstrate complementary emotions of temperance and equanimity (Shields, p. 98).

As an extension of the perpetuation of these gendered emotions, masculinity can be regarded as the more compatible attribute that controls discourse power in the public sphere, and femininity as the more desirable trait that regulates domestic activities in the private sphere. However, this interpretation of gender division conceals inherent power inequities between men and women based on a subjective assessment of each gender’s relative strengths and weaknesses (Shields, p. 93). Therefore, only when both men and women are allowed to tread beyond the socially constructed line that divides the public sphere and the private sphere, can gender stereotypes – especially those in the emotional realm – be gradually reduced.

The Chinese idol culture has blurred the clear line of demarcation between the public sphere and the private sphere in the following two ways: (1) Female online users (netizens), who make up the overwhelming majority of the idol fandom, actively demonstrate their influence in the public sphere by socially and financially supporting their idols and the Chinese entertainment industry; (2) Male idols usually flip the script on traditional masculinity and express feminine emotional traits, such as acting cute or showing emotional vulnerability in front of the audience. Male idols’ expressions of defiance against masculine emotions evoke overprotective reactions from female netizens who subsequently assert dominance over the professional or even personal lives of their idols, thereby reversing traditional gender roles in the public sphere.

However, as evidenced by the Chinese society’s reaction to the popularization of the idol culture, social backlash can arise out of a perceived attempt to distort the gender hierarchy. As a result of this perceived breach of gender norms, mainstream society stigmatizes the idol culture as a defective product of repeated exposure to feminine emotions. Stigma attached to each expression of a breach can be explained by Erving Goffman’s theory of social stigma. According to Goffman (1986), the categorization of a stigmatized attribute is based on its social visibility. In this sense, discredited stigma is a stigma that is readily visible for judgment and discreditable stigma is a concealable attribute that is not immediately perceivable. Female netizens in the idol culture are typically assigned a discredited stigma because of their visible identity as women. In idol culture, female netizens no longer exhibit a stereotypically “inferior and ineffectual emotionality” but rather turn to “masculine passion” to guide their social action (Shields, p. 98), such as rallying an online fan base to demand better pay for an idol. The sharp contrast between the emotional expectations for women and their actual behaviors leads to an explicit stigmatization of female netizens in the Chinese idol culture.

Male idols, on the other hand, are discreditable individuals whose stigma lies beneath their masculine physicality. Because of their endorsement of feminine emotions, male idols are seen as embodying traits that are associated with subordinate masculinity – the “resistance alternative” of hegemonic masculinity that dictates the socially desirable representation of masculinity (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Therefore, the simultaneous existence of discredited stigma and discreditable stigma in the Chinese idol culture prompts members of this marginalized online community –especially female netizens who are readily discriminated against due to the conspicuousness of their gender identity –to reverse stigmatization by highlighting their responsible citizenship. Surprisingly, female netizens rarely rally themselves under the banner of solidarity to collectively challenge their shared identity threat. Instead, the master status as a worthy member of a specific online fan base prevails, thereby creating a multitude of inter-group fights in which online fan bases defend their righteous beliefs and behaviors that allegedly promote the greater good for the larger society.

The perceived successful demonstration of an online fan base’s participatory citizenship hinges on the group’s level of cohesion. An online fan base in the Chinese idol culture can be incredibly adept at emotionally manipulating its members to adhere to a unique set of moral standards that legitimizes the group’s distinct values and actions. The first and the most critical step is to create a collective identity from which members are consistently infused with positive emotions such as shared pride for their idol and mutual intimacy through forming bonds with similar others (Bloch, p. 259).

Female netizens in the idol culture are typically assigned a discredited stigma because of their visible identity as women."

However, intense cultivation of shared narratives in an online fan base can result in groupthink – a psychological phenomenon in which the compelling need for conformity in a group produces dysfunctional decision-making outcomes (Janis, 1982). If a member voices opposition to the group’s value system, other members will vehemently attack this member to the extent that the deviant either passively practices self-censorship and no longer objects to the dominant ideal of the group or chooses to renounce their membership. Although some members may not privately conform to group norms, they adhere to public conformity out of fear of these sanctions and the threat of expulsion from the fan base. As a result, moral solidarity in an online fan base is usually carved out of a remarkable combination of the group’s righteous anger at perceived outcasts and members’ intense fear of being one of the persecuted “nonmembers” (Collins, p. 33).

All of these symptoms of groupthink give rise to inter-group competitions in which each online fan base’s perceived morality is further legitimized through repeated experiences of shared emotional arousal. Since idol culture is highly stigmatized in Chinese society, there exists a long-held belief that idols, who are placed in a relatively inferior position in the Chinese entertainment industry, always have to compete for limited resources to advance their careers. Alarmed by this imagined competitiveness, an online fan base that advocates for an idol regularly engages in conflictual interactions with other fan bases to demonstrate the group’s collective strength as a reflection of their idol’s popularity. However, another important goal of winning an inter-group fight is to highlight a fan base’s perceived civic responsibility at the expense of another fan base’s perceived social wrongdoing.

fan base’s perceived social wrongdoing. The achievement of success allows winning fan bases to immerse in a collective experience of joy and enthusiasm, which results in a snowball effect of emotional contagion that further justifies the necessity of cultivating solidarity and conformity to achieve the group’s intended goals of defeating perceived opposition and demonstrating good citizenship (Collins, p. 42; Bloch, p. 264).

However, the effort to neutralize the stigma attached to the Chinese idol culture may, in fact, reinforce gender-based emotional stereotypes in mainstream society. Online users who do not affiliate with the idol culture usually appeal to the argument that the end result of these online inter-group conflicts is the product of feminine emotionality instead of masculine rationality. As a result, competing fan bases’ perceived defense of Chinese social norms was overshadowed by this gendered interpretation in which female emotion is portrayed as “a somewhat unstable sensitivity of feelings toward oneself and others” (Shields, p. 97). With the detrimental combination of society’s implicit rejection of women’s growing social influence in the public sphere, female-dominated online fan bases often grieve over the fact that they are not only emotionally alienated from each other but also socially isolated by the dominant patriarchal order.

these symptoms of groupthink give rise to inter-group competitions in which each online fan base’s perceived morality is further legitimized through repeated experiences of shared emotional arousal."

In the recent decade, idol culture has bloomed into a virally popular trend in China. Although the explicit display of emotionally deviant traits by major actors in the Chinese idol culture has helped bridge the traditionally separate public sphere and private sphere, mainstream society takes advantage of this violation of gendered emotion norms to discreditably stigmatize female-dominated fan bases and discreditably stigmatize male idols. One tentative effort that female netizens – the dominant majority of this marginalized online community – commonly use to neutralize stigma is to showcase their affective citizenship through unifying a fan base under a well-defined value system and getting group members involved in emotionally intense events with other fan bases. However, mainstream society may perceive these social actions as the inevitable products of the spontaneous expression of feminine emotions, thereby legitimizing existing gender-based emotional stereotypes about the Chinese idol culture. Although many struggles have arisen out of these complex gender dynamics in the popularization of the Chinese idol culture, it is gratifying to see that netizens in this subculture have been tirelessly defying the questionable legitimacy of genderbased emotional stigma. In fact, there have been several online movements in China where a number of fan bases rally together to call for mutual solidarity in the idol fandom. Additionally, as the public becomes more informed about an emotional spectrum free of gender stereotyping, there has also been a stronger endorsement of male idols who publicly exhibit feminine emotional traits. These visible indications of positive change in the relationship between the idol culture and mainstream society will continue to be a potent force that not only shapes the Chinese online landscape, but also deepens our sociological understanding of a subculture that was born as a realm of stigmatization.

REFERENCES

Bloch, K. R. (2016). "'It is just SICKENING': Emotions and discourse in an anti-immigrant discussion forum." Sociological Focus, 49(4), 257-270. doi:10.1080/00380237.2016.1169901

Collins, R. (1979). Stratification, Emotional Energy, and the Transient Emotions. Theory & Society, 7(2), 201-237.

Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept. Gender & Society, 19(6), 829-859. doi:10.1177/0891243205278639

Goffman, E. (1986). Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Touchstone.

Habermas, J. (1997). Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Polity Press.

Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of groupthink: A psychological study of foreign-policy decisions and fiascoes. Houghton Mifflin.

Shields, S. A. (2007). PASSIONATE MEN, EMOTIONAL WOMEN: Psychology Constructs Gender Difference in the Late 19th Century. History of Psychology, 10(2), 92-110. doi:10.1037/1093-4510.10.2.92

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DIY Wallpaper Music: The Mass Popularization of Lofi Streams NAYUN

EOM

Technological advances may be equated as an advancement in music production and consumption, but the hip-hop subgenre known as Lofi, short for “low fidelity,” runs counter to this assumption. In fact, the effect of deliberately reduced production quality in the Lofi aesthetic, which can be categorized as accessibility, repeatability, and versatility, is central to its mass popularization in the age of music streaming culture.

imperfections that characterize Lofi are the types of flaws that are deliberately eliminated in a recording studio setting to signal professionalism in music production. Because of this, modern-day Lofi is regarded as a “Do-It-Yourself (DIY)” music aesthetic, representing the “homemade quality of analog recordings” (Lofi Music Guide: History and Characteristics of Lofi Music, 2022). The low costs and the low expectation of production quality became one of the defining advantages of Lofi as a genre: accessibility. A highly accessible genre of music contributes to a large amount of production on internet platforms, increasing the supply of Lofi tracks on popular music streaming platforms such as Youtube and Spotify

First of all, the accessibility, or the inherent low production barriers, of Lofi enable mass quantities of products in a time of digitally networked music proliferation. In musical terms, low fidelity refers to a low production quality of sound that contains technical flaws such as background noise, distortion, hum, or limited frequency response (Sharma, 2021). Lofi as a genre is traced to the works of Japanese DJ Nujabes and American rapper J Dilla in the 1950s, who mixed elements of hip hop, jazz, and electronica with lowfidelity signals, including the hiss, warble, and saturation of tape machine recordings (Sharma, 2021) The auditory

Interpreting the accessibility of Lofi as an advantage is specific to the contemporary time period, highlighting the importance of the social context of technological use Low fidelity was originally a result of low standard equipment due to economic necessity, but the “DIY” quality resonates with nonexpert creators. The contemporary age, unlike when Lofi first emerged, is a digitally networked culture that is characterized by a range of “usergenerated creativity” and democratization of knowledge (Peters & Fitzsimons, 2012). Through the proliferation of personal computers, music production has also democratized for the masses, including those without technical or musical training

Through the proliferation of personal computers, music production has also democratized for the masses, including those without technical or musical training."

Therefore, a DIY electronic genre like Lofi, with not only little to no costs but simplified expectations of production quality, is a great match for mass popularization. The inseparable relationship between material technology and their ecosystem of social, political, economic, and material processes reflects what Kline (1985) terms the sociotechnical system of use While the low sonic quality was previously deemed unfavorable in a different social context, the ease of producing Lofi has a mass appeal in the contemporary digitized age where anyone could produce and disseminate music

The second successful quality of Lofi is the repeatability of drumming loops in Lofi tracks, which match the supply and demand of passive streaming services. Underlying the string of sampled tracks, a characteristic Lofi piece ties together the melodic sections through a looped drumming pattern in a low- to mid-tempo range of 70 to 85 beats per minute, displaying the genre’s large hip-hop influence (Winston & Saywood 2019). Schloss and Chang (2014) trace the use of looping samplers to early turntable DJs, who repeated and extended segments of soul and funk records with rhythmic drum beats to make their new records more danceable. In the case of Lofi, the looping nature makes the tracks not necessarily danceable, but endlessly streamable on the internet as ambience, making the genre a sort of wallpaper music that is omnipresent on the various walls of the internet

The repetitive nature of Lofi appeals to both the demand side of consumption and the supply side of production in notable ways On the demand end of ambient music, there is a wide psychological and societal appeal of consuming endlessly repetitive tunes From a psychological standpoint, the interrupted looping and sustained elements of ambient tones allow the brain to “easily predict on a subconscious level how it will continue to sound” (Sherman, 2019). As a result, Lofi is often consumed passively while conducting other activities, most commonly studying or working (Winston & Saywood, 2019). From a societal lens, the constant passive listening of music reflects what Kassbian (2001) terms “ubiquitous listening,” which reflects the everpresent role of music due to the oversaturation of information. On the supply side, the repetitiveness enables the creation of hours-long playlists or in some cases, live streams that are literally played for 24 hours every day. Specifically, the stable repetition of similar drumming patterns lends itself to seamlessly tying together track after track

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

The business of music streaming services is centered around maximizing the amount of user retention for profit, an animal-trap sociotechnical system that Seaver (2017) analyzes as “hooking” and trapping users. The appeal of Lofi streams is not flashy attention-grabbing tactics but rather a reliably constant stream to accompany, theoretically, any activity The way Lofi can be easily ignored, similar to wallpaper in a room, serves to hook and retain users effortlessly Overall, the constant supply and demand of repetitive tunes reinforce one another, increasing the market for passive music streaming.

Lastly, the third quality of Lofi is versatility through diversified sampling, which caters to various internet communities, contributing to a global popularization of the genre. Sampling refers to the use of preexisting recordings in a new composition, which is a central element to hip hop, and by extension, Lofi (Schloss & Chang, 2014). Through sampling, Lofi producers tap into niche communities organized around different pockets of pop culture. For instance, some producers derive clips from popular films and soundtracks with a massive international audience, such as American cartoons, Bollywood, Japanese Anime, and Korean pop music Samples also cater to online communities organized around types of hobbies, such as Minecraft gaming or coding, using clips that reference soundtracks or sound files recognizable to those in the community In addition to instrumentals, some tracks occasionally even use vocal samples of speech snippets derived from films or television shows, strengthening the association listeners have with the Lofi track and the source of the sample (Winston & Saywood, 2019).

Sampling niche acoustic representations of interest-based communities are significant for facilitating a specific kind of social bonding through music. In general, musicality and social bonding are deeply linked, which is a relationship that Savage (2021) theorizes is fundamentally linked to the level of human biological and cultural evolution The social reward associated with sharing repetition, synchronization, and harmonization of rhythms and pitches is significant to feel connected to one another (Savage, 2021) This is especially important in digitally networked culture where the anonymization and size of public networks create a desire for smaller communities. The flexible nature of low-fidelity hip hop allows producers from a wide range of backgrounds and interests to insert a varied range of samples that satisfy a diverse range of listeners.

the looping nature [of Lofi] makes the tracks not necessarily danceable, but endlessly streamable on the internet as ambience, making the genre a sort of wallpaper music that is omnipresent on the various walls of the internet."

Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein

In conclusion, the low fidelity of Lofi as a genre is a strength in a sociotechnical ecosystem of digitally networked music production and consumption. The low costs and expectations of productions create an accessible “Do-It-Yourself” genre that producers anywhere can showcase through user-based platforms. The repetitive drum beats of Lofi also serve to fulfill the demand and supply of wallpaper music and enable a massive supply of unending streams. The use of diverse sources of sampling also contributes to a need for social bonding in various spaces on the internet. Despite the increasing heights of music production standards, the mass popularity of Lofi highlights a different set of priorities for producers and listeners who wish to decorate their corners of the internet with their own wallpaper

REFERENCES

Joseph, S, Chang, J (2014) Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop Wesleyan University Press

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Photo: Newt Gordon-Rein