From Filter Bubbles to Transparency Reports
Highlighting CITAP researchers and research—including a new textbook!
Platforms, Power, and Politics
How does the recent proliferation of digital media shape our approach to political communication? How should we consider this shifting approach to political communication in increasingly digital media ecosystems alongside broader, longstanding power structures influencing communication and politics? In their new textbook Platforms, Power, and Politics: An Introduction to Political Communication in the Digital Age, Ulrike Klinger, Daniel Kreiss, and Bruce Mutsvairo trace the transformation of political communication in the aftermath of digital technology’s explosive development and widespread adoption, in a text accessible to a wide-ranging audience.
Klinger, Kreiss, and Mutsvairo take a broad approach to the term “technology,” considering the term inclusive of all “knowledge, skills, processes, methods, and tools.” In this broad sense, technology has shaped both communication and political systems for the bulk of human history, leaving its mark through everything from the first bound volumes (the codex) to the printing press. More recently, the increasing ubiquity of the internet and related digital technologies have revolutionized societal approaches to political communications, though not always in the ways we might expect. As one example, the supposed existence of closed-off, like-minded social media “filter bubbles” or “echo chambers” has not held up to empirical scrutiny, yet filter bubbles and echo chambers have received undue academic and media attention.
Both political and media systems are capable of generating social progress and backsliding, often simultaneously. Just as digital technologies can bring attention to organizing efforts in pursuit of liberal democratic ideals, so too can digital platforms fan the flames of illiberalism, authoritarianism, and racism. Though digital media platforms can theoretically serve as democratizing forces in political systems, the democratizing power of social media is not always achieved in practice. In Klinger, Kreiss, and Mutsvairo’s words, “Democracy – like any political system – must be continually performed, legitimated, and protected by many institutions and political actors.” Democracy must be repeatedly achieved, and the work to sustain democracy continues even in an increasingly digital society.
In 13 chapters designed to be read together or alone, and interspersed with compelling cases illustrating important concepts, Klinger, Kreiss, and Mutsvairo’s text provides important insight into how we can understand the digitization of political communication while remaining cognizant that it remains embedded in broader systems of power. In doing so, the authors provide a valuable resource for students, researchers, journalists, and other stakeholders—as well as anyone interested in understanding the connections between politics, communication, and an ever-increasing digital world.
(Summary by Katherine Furl)
Navigating Transparency Reports as Corporate Social Responsibility
How can we understand the motivations, audiences, and meanings of transparency reports produced by information and communications technology (ICT) companies? In “Transparency reports as CSR reports: motives, stakeholders, and strategies,” Amanda Reid, Evan Ringel, and Shanetta M. Pendleton argue ICT companies’ transparency reports should be considered a form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting. While transparency reports speak to different stakeholders and adopt different communication strategies across ICT companies, they generally offer ICT companies legitimacy. That transparency reports remain unregulated, however, presents a number of potential and as-yet-unaddressed issues.
Transparency reports produced by ICT companies provide stakeholders—including users, employees, shareholders, the government, and society at large—with information about user privacy, government surveillance, and content moderation. Transparency reports can be motivated by ICT companies’ desires to communicate their core values, aid economic performance, and respond to stakeholders' demands. Because transparency reports are not required under U.S. law, ICT companies produce them on a voluntary basis. Still, providing transparency reports has become the norm among ICT companies. Market leaders like Google, Apple, and Microsoft have produced them for nearly a decade, and less prominent companies have followed suit. As Big Tech faces increasing scrutiny, these reports help ICT companies assert their legitimacy, portray ICT companies as socially responsible, and hold government agencies accountable for surveillance requests.
Reid and her coauthors seek to understand what motivates ICT companies’ transparency reports and how these companies position themselves, engage with stakeholders, and employ different communication strategies in these reports. To do so, they analyze transparency reports produced by 88 international ICT companies in 2021. Among these reports, Reid and coauthors find:
Most ICT companies produce ICT reports to communicate the companies’ core values and culture and to signal companies’ commitments to transparency.
The majority of ICT companies also use pro-consumer language positioning companies as advocates for users and protectors of consumer data.
All ICT companies consider customers stakeholders in transparency reports. Nearly all companies consider customers primary stakeholders—customers directly impact and influence company activities. Many companies also consider the government a stakeholder in transparency reports. The government is mostly, however, considered a secondary stakeholder—the government is not seen as directly engaged in companies’ transactions nor considered key to companies’ survival.
Most companies emphasize how their transparency reports are informative for stakeholders, providing them with valuable information related to government requests and content moderation.
Reid, Pendleton, and Ringel’s analysis indicates ICT companies use transparency reports to signal their legitimacy. Producing transparency reports helps market leaders signpost their central role in the market and lets other companies align themselves with institutional norms set by market leaders. Transparency reports also communicate ICT companies’ social responsibility to stakeholders. So long as transparency reports remain unregulated, however, their production will face potential issues. ICT companies can omit whatever information they choose to keep out of transparency reports—and, if they’d like, they can opt out of producing these reports entirely. As Reid, Pendleton, and Ringel put it,
“Unexamined CSR reporting risks fueling the core problem that CSR was intended to address, namely, the pursuit of corporate economic goals at the expense of social responsibility... If these nonfinancial disclosures are simply taken at face value, they risk reinforcing extant power dynamics rather than offering an opportunity for dialogue among stakeholders.”
For transparency reports to truly establish social responsibility to users and broader society rather than simply serve the economic ends of ICT companies, then, accountability mechanisms around their production must be put into place.
(Summary by Katherine Furl)
Publications and Appearances
Francesca Tripodi joined the Center for Media at Risk and the Annenberg Center for Collaborative Communication during a symposium on “When Media Put Social Justice at Risk”. Francesca spoke during the 3rd panel, “Consequences”, on the consequences of putting social justice at risk, and how might the media position themselves more productively to embolden social justice initiatives, and if the consequences are mainly at the individual level or a broader structural level.
Coming Soon
February
TJ Billard Book Talk: February 8th @ 3:30pm | Book Talk: Voices for Transgender Equality
CITAP is hosting TJ Billard for a book talk on their “Voices for Transgender Equality: Making Change in the Networked Public Sphere”.
Students can earn Campus Life Experience (CLE) credit.