U.S. Social Work Students and Social Media: A Descriptive Analysis of Survey Items across Four Time-Points.

Between fall 2018 and spring 2023, the author conducted four survey studies on social work students' use, attitudes, and knowledge regarding social media: (1) a pilot study in fall 2018 (N = 57), (2) a comparative study in spring 2019 (N = 42), (3) a national survey study in fall 2019 (N = 430), and (4) a national replication survey study in spring 2023 (N = 287). The purpose of this article is to describe general observed trends across these four studies. Findings included persistent and pervasive use of social media, decreased knowledge of the impact of social media in undermining democratic processes, students' inverted concern for others' use of social media when compared with concern over their own use, diminished agreement with the importance of protecting personal data and treating data protection as a civil/human right, overall agreement that law enforcement should be able to use social media in the apprehension of people accused of committing a crime, decreased agreement that disinformation is a problem on social media, ambivalence toward social media's positive impact on society, and increased strong disagreement that students wish to delete their accounts but feel unable to do so. Recommendations are shared.

On the Willingness to Pay for social media/messenger services taking into account personality and sent/received messages among WhatsApp users.

WhatsApp has billions of users worldwide. Instead of paying a subscription fee, users provide their data for the use allowance. This data is used by Meta - the company behind WhatsApp - to obtain insights into user characteristics and monetize those insights. However, this data business model is among others criticized for fostering a loss of privacy that arises when platforms analyze user data, and for the use of design elements to attract users to the platform when they are not online or to extend their online time. Therefore, an increasing number of scientists are discussing whether other payment models are needed to overcome those disadvantages, like a monetary payment model. However, users would probably only pay for improved social media products. This paper provides an empirical basis for understanding the user perspective and, in particular, whether and how much users are willing to pay for improved social media products. For this, 2924 WhatsApp users' perspectives on this topic were investigated. They were asked whether and how much they are willing to pay money for a messenger/social media service when its quality would be improved. Variables potentially influencing Willingness to Pay (i.e., personality, sent/received messages) were studied as well. 47% of the participants were unwilling to pay for a healthier messenger service, and about a quarter were willing or stayed neutral. Further analysis revealed that more agreeable people were more willing to pay. Further: Higher Extraversion was associated with more sent/received messages, but the number of sent/received messages was not linked to Willingness to Pay. The present study shows that many users still are not willing to pay for social media (here messengers), which indicates that the advantages of paying for social media with money instead of with one's own data might need to be better communicated.

Liquid Health. Medicine in the age of surveillance capitalism.

Digital health technologies transform practices, roles, and relationships in medicine. New possibilities for a ubiquitous and constant data collection and the processing of data in real-time enable more personalized health services. These technologies might also allow users to actively participate in health practices, thus potentially changing the role of patients from passive receivers of healthcare to active agents. The crucial driving force of this transformation is the implementation of data-intensive surveillance and monitoring as well as self-monitoring technologies. Some commentators use terms like revolution, democratization, and empowerment to describe the aforementioned transformation process in medicine. The public debate as well as most of the ethical discourse on digital health tends to focus on the technologies themselves, mostly ignoring the economic framework of their design and implementation. Analyzing the transformation process connected to digital health technologies needs an epistemic lens that also considers said economic framework, which I argue is surveillance capitalism. This paper introduces the concept of liquid health as such an epistemic lens. Liquid health is based on Zygmunt Bauman's framing of modernity as a process of liquefaction that dissolves traditional norms and standards, roles, and relations. By using liquid health as an epistemic lens, I aim to show how digital health technologies reshape concepts of health and illness, change the scope of the medical domain, and liquify roles and relationships that surround health and healthcare. The basic hypothesis is that although digital health technologies can lead to personalization of treatment and empowerment of users, their economic framework of surveillance capitalism may undermine these very goals. Using liquid health as a concept allows us to better understand and describe practices of health and healthcare that are shaped by digital technologies and the specific economic practices they are inseparably attached to.

From industrial to digital citizenship: rethinking social rights in cyberspace.

Growing social inequalities represent a major concern associated with the Digital Revolution. The article tackles this issue by exploring how welfare regulations and redistribution policies can be rethought in the age of digital capitalism. It focuses on the history and enduring crisis of social citizenship rights in their connection with technological changes, in order to draw a comparison between the industrial and the digital scenario. The first section addresses the link between the Industrial Revolution and the genesis of social rights. It describes the latter as a legal 'machine' designed to offset the imbalances produced by the technological movement of industrialization. The second and third sections introduce the notion of 'industrial citizenship' to describe the architecture of social rights in mature industrial societies and to contend that European systems of welfare are still largely modeled on an industrial standard. The fourth part investigates the impact of the Digital Revolution on this model of social citizenship. It identifies debates on basic income as a major trajectory for redesigning welfare regulations in a post-industrial era, and the digital user as a crucial emerging subject of rights. The final part explores how digital users could be entitled to social rights as data suppliers. To this end, it introduces the idea of 'digital-social rights' resulting from the incorporation of welfare and redistribution principles into emerging digital rights. Hence, it proposes a legal-political framework for the redistribution of the revenues generated by data in the form of a 'digital basic income' for citizens of cyberspace.

The Metaverse as a virtual form of data-driven smart cities: the ethics of the hyper-connectivity, datafication, algorithmization, and platformization of urban society.

Recent advances in computing and immersive technologies have provided Meta (formerly Facebook) with the opportunity to leapfrog or expedite its way of thinking and devising a global computing platform called the "Metaverse". This hypothetical 3D network of virtual spaces is increasingly shaping alternatives to the imaginaries of data-driven smart cities, as it represents ways of living in virtually inhabitable cities. At the heart of the Metaverse is a computational understanding of human users' cognition, emotion, motivation, and behavior that reduces the experience of everyday life to logic and calculative rules and procedures. This implies that human users become more knowable and manageable and their behavior more predictable and controllable, thereby serving as passive data points feeding the AI and analytics system that they have no interchange with or influence on. This paper examines the forms, practices, and ethics of the Metaverse as a virtual form of data-driven smart cities, paying particular attention to: privacy, surveillance capitalism, dataveillance, geosurveillance, human health and wellness, and collective and cognitive echo-chambers. Achieving this aim will provide the answer to the main research question driving this study: What ethical implications will the Metaverse have on the experience of everyday life in post-pandemic urban society? In terms of methodology, this paper deploys a thorough review of the current status of the Metaverse, urban informatics, urban science, and data-driven smart cities literature, as well as trends, research, and developments. We argue that the Metaverse will do more harm than good to human users due to the massive misuse of the hyper-connectivity, datafication, algorithmization, and platformization underlying the associated global architecture of computer mediation. It follows that the Metaverse needs to be re-cast in ways that re-orientate in how users are conceived; recognize their human characteristics; and take into account the moral values and principles designed to realize the benefits of socially disruptive technologies while mitigating their pernicious effects. This paper contributes to the academic debates in the emerging field of data-driven smart urbanism by highlighting the ethical implications posed by the Metaverse as speculative fiction that illustrates the concerns raised by the pervasive and massive use of advanced technologies in data-driven smart cities. In doing so, it seeks to aid policy-makers in better understanding the pitfalls of the Metaverse and their repercussions upon the wellbeing of human users and the core values of urban society. It also stimulates prospective research and further critical perspectives on this timely topic.

Lust, Gluttony, Fake News! The consumption of the abject objects of desire / Luxúria, Gula, Fake News! O consumo dos abjetos objetos do desejo.

Lying seem to have ancient roots and are deeply rooted in human inclinations to deceit for immoral or illicit advantages. Throughout history, malicious human productions have been reproduced in a limited way in niches of the private sphere. From the end of the 20th century, technological accumulations in terms of content production and consumer segmentation of the "information society" also generated conditions for the creation of the "disinformation society" through the potentialization of distorted communicative processes linked to commercial interests. It is argued in the text that, more relevant than the credibility of content and its conveyors in the context of technological potential for the production and distribution of fake news, the consumption of lies has expanded due to unconfessable human needs. Using the theoretical framework of Guy Debord's "society of the spectacle", Christoph Türcke's Philosophy of Sensation and Shoshana Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism, the new directions of contemporary capitalism are discussed. We describe the emergence of a new form of market that exploits the lust of excitement by social intolerance and panic in the context of biocalamities such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In the new modes of production, huge profits are generated by the society that has become the spectacle itself - now driven by the lust/greed of sensation in the excitement trade. Gluttony for excessive consumption of content that reaffirms social bonds generates more screen time on devices, although also implicated in the genealogy of xenophobia. The text discusses how the mechanisms of exploitation of lies, gossip and defamation confidences are transformed into commodities. The communicative action to overcome ideologies and emancipation of the human being has been reduced to the alienated reproduction of memes and particles of sensational information. In the context of this new "Media Age", discourses without dialogue and conviction without interlocutions proliferate. Just as the excessive supply of sugars has led to obesity, the lust for the sensation articulated with gluttony for its consumption has led to infobesity and infodemic corruptions of communication.

A mentira parece ter raízes antigas e profundamente fincadas nas inclinações humanas para o engodo para obtenção de vantagens imorais ou ilícitas. Ao longo da História, as produções caluniosas humanas se reproduziram de forma limitada em nichos da esfera privada. A partir do final do século XX as acumulações tecnológicas em termos de produção de conteúdo e segmentação de consumidores da "sociedade da informação" também geraram condições para criação da "sociedade da desinformação" por meio da potencialização de processos comunicativos distorcidos ligados a interesses comerciais. Defende-se no presente texto que, mais relevante que a credibilidade de conteúdos e seus veiculadores no contexto da potencialização tecnológica para produção e distribuição das fake news, o consumo de mentiras expandiu-se em função de necessidades humanas inconfessáveis. Usando o referencial teórico da "sociedade do espetáculo" de Guy Debord, da Filosofia da Excitação de Christoph Türcke e do Capitalismo de Vigilância de Shoshana Zuboff, discute-se os novos rumos do capitalismo contemporâneo. Descreve-se o surgimento de uma nova forma de mercado que explora a luxúria da excitação pelo ódio da intolerância e pelo pânico no contexto das biocalamidades como a pandemia do COVID-19. Nos novos modos de produção, vultosos lucros são gerados pela sociedade que se tornou o próprio espetáculo - agora impulsionado pela luxúria/gula da sensação no comércio da excitação. A gula pelo consumo excessivo de conteúdos de reafirmação de laços sociais gera mais tempo de tela nos devices, embora também esteja implicada na genealogia das xenofobias. Discute-se assim os mecanismos da exploração da mentira, da fofoca e das confidências de difamação transformadas em commodities. A ação comunicativa para superação de ideologias e emancipação do ser humano tem sido reduzida à reprodução alienada de memes e partículas de informação sensacional. No contexto dessa nova "Idade Mídia", proliferam os discursos sem diálogos e a convicção sem reflexão e sem interlocuções. Assim como a oferta excessiva de açúcares levou à obesidade, a luxúria pela sensação articulada à gula por seu consumo e replicação, está nos conduzido à infobesidade e às corrupções infodêmicas da comunicação.

Maneuvering in the Interval: Reflections on Immanent Entanglements.

Both perspective and leverage are needed in order to arrive at a place where it is possible to do the philosophical work required in order to adequately account for our present sociotechnical landscape. One of the key characteristics of this landscape is the collapse of scale, as things become more like fluid assemblages and the economic incentives of surveillance capitalism turn ordinary things into surveillance devices tuned for others' profit. In this context we need a language not only of imagination and humility in the face of countless gaps between things, but also one of entanglement, care, and response-ability.

Don't Be Evil: Should We Use Google in Schools?

Google is a multinational technology company whose massive advertising profits have allowed them to expand into many areas, including education. While the company has increasingly faced public scrutiny, the use of Google software and hardware in schools has often resulted in little debate. In this paper, we conduct a technoethical audit of Google to address ethical, legal, democratic, economic, technological, and pedagogical concerns educators, students, and community members might consider. We describe how Google extracts personal data from students, skirts laws intended to protect them, targets them for profits, obfuscates the company's intent in their Terms of Service, recommends harmful information, and distorts students' knowledge. We propose that educators and scholars more closely interrogate the tools of Google and other technology companies to move toward more democratic and just uses of technology in schools.

Our Postpandemic World: What Will It Take to Build a Better Future for People and Planet?

Policy Points Despite the pandemic's ongoing devastating impacts, it also offers the opportunity and lessons for building a better, fairer, and sustainable world. Transformational change will require new ways of working, challenging powerful individuals and industries who worsened the crisis, will act to exploit it for personal gain, and will work to ensure that the future aligns with their interests. A flourishing world needs strong and equitable structures and systems, including strengthened democratic, research, and educational institutions, supported by ideas and discourses that are free of opaque and conflicted influence and that challenge the status quo and inequitable distribution of power.

Big Data, Surveillance Capitalism, and Precision Medicine: Challenges for Privacy.

Surveillance capitalism companies, such as Google and Facebook, have substantially increased the amount of information collected, analyzed, and monetized, including health information increasingly used in precision medicine research, thereby presenting great challenges for health privacy.

Hormonal Health: Period Tracking Apps, Wellness, and Self-Management in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism.

Period tracking is an increasingly widespread practice, and its emphasis is changing from monitoring fertility to encompassing a more broad-based picture of users' health. Delving into the data of one's menstrual cycle, and the hormones that are presumed to be intimately linked with it, is a practice that is reshaping ideas about health and wellness, while also shaping subjects and subjectivities that succeed under conditions of surveillance capitalism. Through close examination of six extended interviews, this article elaborates a version of period tracking that sidesteps fertility and, in doing so, participates in the "queering" of menstrual technologies. Apps can facilitate the integration of institutional medical expertise and quotidian embodied experience within a broader approach to the self as a management project. We introduce the concept of "hormonal health" to describe a way of caring for, and knowing about, bodies, one that weaves together mental and physical health, correlates subjective and objective information, and calls into question the boundary between illness and wellness. For those we spoke with, menstrual cycles are understood to affect selfhood across any simplistic body-mind division or reproductive imperative, engendering complex techniques of self-management, including monitoring, hypothesizing, intervening in medical appointments, adjusting schedules, and interpreting social interactions. Such techniques empower their proponents, but not within conditions of their choosing. In addition to problems with data privacy and profit, these techniques perpetuate individualized solutions and the internalization of pressures in a gender-stratified, neoliberal context, facilitating success within flawed structures.

Should We Pay for Our Social Media/Messenger Applications? Preliminary Data on the Acceptance of an Alternative to the Current Prevailing Data Business Model.

In the age of surveillance capitalism, the prevailing business model underlying the use of social media applications ("apps") foresees the exchange of personal data for the allowance to use an online service. Such a data business model comes with many potential negative side effects ranging from violation of privacy issues to election manipulation. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to think of alternatives to the current data business model. The present study investigated how strong the support would be for a monetary payment model among a sample of 210 participants. Participants were asked about their willingness to pay for social media, if in turn their data would be private and other problems concerning social media use would be tackled. Only one-fifth of participants (21.43%) supported such a model. From the Big Five personality traits, Agreeableness was positively associated with support of such a model. Finally, data are also provided on how much participants would be willing to pay for social media on a monthly basis. The present study's findings are of a preliminary nature and will contribute to the start of an important discussion.

A sociological agenda for the tech age.

This article outlines a sociological agenda for the era of "tech," a period when digital technologies have come to dominate our social lives. It argues that we should break "tech" down into two parts, the production side and the consumption side. The production side concerns the ways in which these technologies are made, the social actors involved on the design, financing, and production side, and the consumption side refers to the ways in which ordinary users make use of these technologies and the ways in which their use is transforming everyday life. The article maintains that this is an area of research to which sociologists need to pay much greater attention if they are to understand the contemporary world satisfactorily.

Re-thinking Digital Health: Data, Appisation and the (im)possibility of 'Opting out'.

Presented as providing cost-, time- and labour- effective tools for the (self)management of health, health apps are often celebrated as beneficial to all. However, their negative effects - commodification of user data and infringement on privacy - are rarely addressed. This article focuses on one particularly troubling aspect: the difficulty of opting out of data sharing and aggregation during app use or after unsubscribing/uninstalling the app. Working in the context of the new European General Data Protection Regulation and its implementation in the UK health services, our analysis reveals the discrepancy between the information presented to users, and the apps' actual handling of user data. We also point to the fundamental tension in the digitisation of health, between the neoliberal model where both health and data concerns are viewed as an individual's responsibility, and the digital-capitalist model, which puts forward, and capitalises on, collective ('Big') data. Pulled between the 'biopolitics of the self' and the 'biopolitics of the population' (concepts coined by Btihaj Ajana), opting out of health datafication therefore cannot be resolved as a matter of individual right alone. The article offers two contributions. Methodologically, we present a toolkit for a multi-level assessment of apps from the perspective of opting out, which can be adapted and used in future research. Conceptually, the article brings together critical digital health scholarship with the perspective of data justice, offering a new approach to health apps, which focuses on opt-out as a legal, social and technical possibility, and as a collective citizen and user right.