PhD Thesis by Davide Beraldo
This dissertation wishes to contribute to the sociological debate on protest movements by develop... more This dissertation wishes to contribute to the sociological debate on protest movements by developing the notion of ‘contentious branding’ as a reflection emerging from the digital exploration of two empirical cases that challenge social movement theory: Occupy and Anonymous. The research was orientated by three interrelated questions operating at a methodological, empirical and theoretical level: How can digital research remediate the study of social movements? What sort of assemblages are articulated around the contentious brands Occupy and Anonymous? How does a branding perspective add to or amend traditional theories of social movements? The argument is built on a complexity-orientated epistemological background, interweaving insights derived from assemblage theory, actor-network theory, socio-semiotics and second-order cybernetics. The empirical research has been undertaken by means of digital techniques: Application Programming Interfaces of popular social media (mostly, Twitter and Facebook) have been pulled for data; the #Occupy and #Anonymous hashtags have been employed as research devices to set the limit of the analysis; and the datasets have been explored mostly by means of network analysis and computer-assisted content analysis techniques. The core contribution of the dissertation is to introduce and develop, within the field of social movement theory, the notion of ‘contentious branding’, to cope with the theoretical challenges highlighted by the empirical sections. A branding perspective on social movements not only fits these specific cases better: it intends to provide an epistemological and methodological device, to sustain a non-essentialist understanding of social movements, especially in the cases of digitalization of empirical phenomena and research methods.
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Papers by Davide Beraldo
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
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First Monday, 2022
This paper presents a comprehensive empirical investigation of the range of actors, issues and su... more This paper presents a comprehensive empirical investigation of the range of actors, issues and sub-groups related to the hashtag Anonymous on Twitter between 2012 and 2015. Complementing existing studies that have provided in-depth accounts of Anonymous from a specific point of view, this research provides an overview of the network related to the discursive construction of Anonymous on Twitter from a synoptic standpoint. In particular, the analysis covers three dimensions: the structure and dynamics of the #Anonymous interaction network; the range of issues that Anonymous has been associated with; and the relation between Anonymous and its offshoots. This research provides a descriptive characterization of the topological and semantic complexity of Anonymous and invites to reflect on the simplifications that our vocabulary and methods entail vis a vis the complexity of digital entities delimited by and individuated through hashtags.
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First Monday, 2022
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Journal of Sociocybernetics
This paper engages with the loosely bounded, ill-defined Anonymous movement, in order to develop ... more This paper engages with the loosely bounded, ill-defined Anonymous movement, in order to develop a theoretical reflection on the process of self-reference within contemporary collectives. It is grounded on a socio-cybernetic framework and builds on a computationallly-assisted interpretative analysis of a huge dataset of Facebook posts related to Anonymous’ self-descriptions. As selected examples show, Anonymous results inherently contradictory. Its boundaries are radically contingent and performative, to the extent that it is impossible to distinguish the authentic from the inauthentic. The collective defines itself as ontologically multiple and radically anti-essentialist. Moreover, whereas Anonymous’ actions are systematically contradictory, Anonymous self-descriptions, relying on arguments mirroring poststructuralist theories, can only be tautologically or paradoxically expressed. Building on Luhmann’s claim that the reproduction of modern societies depends on concealing their se...
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Big Data & Society
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This paper engages with the loosely bounded, ill-defined Anonymous movement, in order to develop ... more This paper engages with the loosely bounded, ill-defined Anonymous movement, in order to develop a theoretical reflection on the process of self-reference within contemporary collectives. It is grounded on a socio-cybernetic framework and builds on a computationallly-assisted interpretative analysis of a huge dataset of Facebook posts related to Anonymous' self-descriptions. As selected examples show, Anonymous results inherently contradictory. Its boundaries are radically contingent and performative, to the extent that it is impossible to distinguish the authentic from the inauthentic. The collective defines itself as ontologically multiple and radically anti-essentialist. Moreover, whereas Anonymous' actions are systematically contradictory, Anonymous self-descriptions, relying on arguments mirroring poststructuralist theories, can only be tautologically or paradoxically expressed. Building on Luhmann's claim that the reproduction of modern societies depends on concealing their self-referential foundations, the conclusion argues that Anonymous, by embracing its own constitutive paradox, pushes the process of autopoiesis to a new, radically recursive logic, departing in this even from recent theorizations on reflexivity.
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This conceptual paper wishes to contribute to the debate on digitally
mediated movements by devel... more This conceptual paper wishes to contribute to the debate on digitally
mediated movements by developing the perspective of ‘contentious branding’. The empirical research has followed the #Occupy and #Anonymous hashtags around popular social media, reconstructing their highly heterogeneous adoption. A branding perspective on contentious politics is aimed at highlighting the diverse and sometimes contradictory appropriations of the ‘semiotic repertoires’ of protest movements, particularly apparent within digital networks of communication. A contentious branding perspective on social movements not only tries to fit these specific cases better: it intends to provide an epistemological and methodological device to sustain a non-essentialist understanding of social movements in general, and to face the challenges and opportunities of digital social movement research in particular. The first section of the paper briefly discusses the concepts ‘social movement’ and ‘branding’, characterizing the proposed idea of ‘contentious branding’. Some insights derived from a broader digital exploration on the uses of the hashtags #Occupy and #Anonymous then serve to emphasize their variable, incoherent and at times contradictory utilization: few of the several reiterations of the brand Occupy, deviating from its original use, are presented, and a heuristic categorization of Anonymous’ diverse issues of involvement is proposed. Based on this, the discussion further develops the concept of contentious branding,
clarifying its analytical boundaries vis a vis neighboring approaches in social movement theory. The conclusion discusses some of the epistemological and methodological implications that contentious branding bears for the study of social movements in the digital age.
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This article discusses the consequences of the commercialization and evolution of the Internet in... more This article discusses the consequences of the commercialization and evolution of the Internet infrastructure, and how it affects our ability to exercise human rights online.
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Poetics, 2016
This article presents an exploratory study of the network of associations among 22,141 YouTube mu... more This article presents an exploratory study of the network of associations among 22,141 YouTube music videos retrieved by ‘following’ the platform’s recommender algorithm, which automatically suggests a list of ‘related videos’ to the user in response to the video currently being viewed. As YouTube’s recommendations are predominantly based on users’ aggregated practices of sequential viewing, this study aims to inductively reconstruct the resulting associations between the musical content in order to investigate their underlying meanings. Network analysis detects 50 clusters of tightly connected videos characterised by a strong internal homogeneity across different axes of similarity. We discuss these findings with reference to the literature on music genres and classification, arguing that the emerging clusters can be considered as ‘crowd-generated music categories’. That is, sets of musical content that derive from the repeated, crowd-based actions of sequential viewing by users on YouTube in combination with the platform’s algorithm. Interestingly, 7 out of 50 clusters are characterised by what may be seen as a ‘situational’ culture of music reception by digital audiences. Such culture is not so much founded on music genres as traditionally conceived, but rather on the purposes of reception which are rooted in the context where this takes place.
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This work sketches out an exploration on some challenges that
digital environments pose to social... more This work sketches out an exploration on some challenges that
digital environments pose to social movements studies. While transformations
in the technology available for communication among movement networks
quite obviously reconfigure their organisational patterns, the current use of the
notion of collective identity, less obviously, is also called into question.
Drawing on a dataset of tweets collected during the early stage of the
worldwide Occupy protest wave, the outcomes of different possibilities of
analysis are presented. The discussion of the results challenges various aspects
of recent trends in Social Movements Theory, including the persistent
distinction between organisational and identitary elements. A socio-semiotic
observation is then acknowledged: to a certain extent, in contemporary protests,
signifiers have acquired distinctive importance with respect to signified, in
mediating the assemblage of contentious networks. The notion of ‘social
movement brand’ is consequently suggested as fitting these phenomenon’s
better than the classical one of collective identity.
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Conference Presentations by Davide Beraldo
The diffusion of digital media is reshaping contentious dynamics and spurring scholarly debate. T... more The diffusion of digital media is reshaping contentious dynamics and spurring scholarly debate. The aim of the present research is to provide empirical evidences for a theoretical argument: that the sociological understanding of “brands” may be fruitfully translated to grasp a part of recent distinctive trends in contentious politics. The empirical case chosen is the nebulous collective of Anonymous. This entity is characterized by explicitly rhizomatic birth and growth, which renders its status controversial and its evolution unpredictable. The focus of the analysis will be on the worldwide mobilization in which Anonymous has been partially (how much?) involved on November 5th, named “the Million Mask March”. The research question which drives the research is: shall we conceive this episode as an off-line manifestation of the (mainly) online Anonymous social movement? or, alternatively, should we better frame this event as a specific, independent, instance of a more abstract Anonymous brand? The goal of the paper is to provide empirically grounded evidences for the latter hypothesis. In order to cope with this question, Twitter network analysis, visualization and exploration will be exploited. The aim is to answer empirical questions like: to which extent do the generic Anonymous network and the specific Million Mask March network overlap? how is this overlap characterized in structural and semantic terms? Accordingly with the underlying theoretical assumptions, we can expect a relatively low level of overlap and significant differences in the composition of the two networks. This result would confirm that Anonymous in its entirety cannot be understood as a social movement, rather could be better treated as a brand, appropriated by different movements.
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Conference Papers by Davide Beraldo
Con la massiccia diffusione dei media digitali, la popular music è diventata la forma culturale d... more Con la massiccia diffusione dei media digitali, la popular music è diventata la forma culturale digitalizzata per eccellenza, a livello di produzione, distribuzione e – soprattutto – fruizione. Lo sviluppo di siti Internet e servizi online che consentono l’ascolto illimitato, gratuito e on demand di musica in streaming sta cambiando rapidamente sia le abitudini dei consumatori digitali, sia l’immaginario, i discorsi, i significati associati a brani, artisti e generi musicali.
L’avvento dei social media ha inoltre coinciso con un’enorme e crescente disponibilità di informazioni sulle pratiche di consumo di miliardi di utenti, immagazzinate e rese accessibili da piattaforme come, ad esempio, YouTube. Sebbene di musica ai tempi di Internet si sia già scritto molto in letteratura, finora è stato notevolmente trascurato il ruolo centrale dei music recommendation systems – sistemi che suggeriscono automaticamente all’utente che musica ascoltare o acquistare – nell’orizzonte musicale contemporaneo.
Questo studio consiste in un’indagine esplorativa delle associazioni tra contenuti musicali generate dal recommender system di YouTube, condotta con tecniche di network analysis su un sample di circa 68mila video musicali in lingua italiana facenti riferimento agli anni '80. Dato il carattere non meramente computazionale dei related videos suggeriti da YouTube – i quali dipendono dai comportamenti di consumo aggregati degli utenti – questa ricerca non punta solo a descrivere una tecnologia. Al contrario, l’obiettivo metodologico ed empirico di questo lavoro consta nell’utilizzare le logiche del medium YouTube per esplorare l’immaginario simbolico che gravita oggi, in Italia, intorno alla musica anni '80, analizzando le “categorie folk” e le associazioni semantiche tra brani, artisti e generi che emergono a partire dalle pratiche di fruizione musicale condivise dai consumatori digitali.
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PhD Thesis by Davide Beraldo
Full text:
http://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=a293284c-257a-43d2-a26d-e5cb3eaa4e8d
Papers by Davide Beraldo
mediated movements by developing the perspective of ‘contentious branding’. The empirical research has followed the #Occupy and #Anonymous hashtags around popular social media, reconstructing their highly heterogeneous adoption. A branding perspective on contentious politics is aimed at highlighting the diverse and sometimes contradictory appropriations of the ‘semiotic repertoires’ of protest movements, particularly apparent within digital networks of communication. A contentious branding perspective on social movements not only tries to fit these specific cases better: it intends to provide an epistemological and methodological device to sustain a non-essentialist understanding of social movements in general, and to face the challenges and opportunities of digital social movement research in particular. The first section of the paper briefly discusses the concepts ‘social movement’ and ‘branding’, characterizing the proposed idea of ‘contentious branding’. Some insights derived from a broader digital exploration on the uses of the hashtags #Occupy and #Anonymous then serve to emphasize their variable, incoherent and at times contradictory utilization: few of the several reiterations of the brand Occupy, deviating from its original use, are presented, and a heuristic categorization of Anonymous’ diverse issues of involvement is proposed. Based on this, the discussion further develops the concept of contentious branding,
clarifying its analytical boundaries vis a vis neighboring approaches in social movement theory. The conclusion discusses some of the epistemological and methodological implications that contentious branding bears for the study of social movements in the digital age.
digital environments pose to social movements studies. While transformations
in the technology available for communication among movement networks
quite obviously reconfigure their organisational patterns, the current use of the
notion of collective identity, less obviously, is also called into question.
Drawing on a dataset of tweets collected during the early stage of the
worldwide Occupy protest wave, the outcomes of different possibilities of
analysis are presented. The discussion of the results challenges various aspects
of recent trends in Social Movements Theory, including the persistent
distinction between organisational and identitary elements. A socio-semiotic
observation is then acknowledged: to a certain extent, in contemporary protests,
signifiers have acquired distinctive importance with respect to signified, in
mediating the assemblage of contentious networks. The notion of ‘social
movement brand’ is consequently suggested as fitting these phenomenon’s
better than the classical one of collective identity.
Conference Presentations by Davide Beraldo
Conference Papers by Davide Beraldo
L’avvento dei social media ha inoltre coinciso con un’enorme e crescente disponibilità di informazioni sulle pratiche di consumo di miliardi di utenti, immagazzinate e rese accessibili da piattaforme come, ad esempio, YouTube. Sebbene di musica ai tempi di Internet si sia già scritto molto in letteratura, finora è stato notevolmente trascurato il ruolo centrale dei music recommendation systems – sistemi che suggeriscono automaticamente all’utente che musica ascoltare o acquistare – nell’orizzonte musicale contemporaneo.
Questo studio consiste in un’indagine esplorativa delle associazioni tra contenuti musicali generate dal recommender system di YouTube, condotta con tecniche di network analysis su un sample di circa 68mila video musicali in lingua italiana facenti riferimento agli anni '80. Dato il carattere non meramente computazionale dei related videos suggeriti da YouTube – i quali dipendono dai comportamenti di consumo aggregati degli utenti – questa ricerca non punta solo a descrivere una tecnologia. Al contrario, l’obiettivo metodologico ed empirico di questo lavoro consta nell’utilizzare le logiche del medium YouTube per esplorare l’immaginario simbolico che gravita oggi, in Italia, intorno alla musica anni '80, analizzando le “categorie folk” e le associazioni semantiche tra brani, artisti e generi che emergono a partire dalle pratiche di fruizione musicale condivise dai consumatori digitali.
Full text:
http://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=a293284c-257a-43d2-a26d-e5cb3eaa4e8d
mediated movements by developing the perspective of ‘contentious branding’. The empirical research has followed the #Occupy and #Anonymous hashtags around popular social media, reconstructing their highly heterogeneous adoption. A branding perspective on contentious politics is aimed at highlighting the diverse and sometimes contradictory appropriations of the ‘semiotic repertoires’ of protest movements, particularly apparent within digital networks of communication. A contentious branding perspective on social movements not only tries to fit these specific cases better: it intends to provide an epistemological and methodological device to sustain a non-essentialist understanding of social movements in general, and to face the challenges and opportunities of digital social movement research in particular. The first section of the paper briefly discusses the concepts ‘social movement’ and ‘branding’, characterizing the proposed idea of ‘contentious branding’. Some insights derived from a broader digital exploration on the uses of the hashtags #Occupy and #Anonymous then serve to emphasize their variable, incoherent and at times contradictory utilization: few of the several reiterations of the brand Occupy, deviating from its original use, are presented, and a heuristic categorization of Anonymous’ diverse issues of involvement is proposed. Based on this, the discussion further develops the concept of contentious branding,
clarifying its analytical boundaries vis a vis neighboring approaches in social movement theory. The conclusion discusses some of the epistemological and methodological implications that contentious branding bears for the study of social movements in the digital age.
digital environments pose to social movements studies. While transformations
in the technology available for communication among movement networks
quite obviously reconfigure their organisational patterns, the current use of the
notion of collective identity, less obviously, is also called into question.
Drawing on a dataset of tweets collected during the early stage of the
worldwide Occupy protest wave, the outcomes of different possibilities of
analysis are presented. The discussion of the results challenges various aspects
of recent trends in Social Movements Theory, including the persistent
distinction between organisational and identitary elements. A socio-semiotic
observation is then acknowledged: to a certain extent, in contemporary protests,
signifiers have acquired distinctive importance with respect to signified, in
mediating the assemblage of contentious networks. The notion of ‘social
movement brand’ is consequently suggested as fitting these phenomenon’s
better than the classical one of collective identity.
L’avvento dei social media ha inoltre coinciso con un’enorme e crescente disponibilità di informazioni sulle pratiche di consumo di miliardi di utenti, immagazzinate e rese accessibili da piattaforme come, ad esempio, YouTube. Sebbene di musica ai tempi di Internet si sia già scritto molto in letteratura, finora è stato notevolmente trascurato il ruolo centrale dei music recommendation systems – sistemi che suggeriscono automaticamente all’utente che musica ascoltare o acquistare – nell’orizzonte musicale contemporaneo.
Questo studio consiste in un’indagine esplorativa delle associazioni tra contenuti musicali generate dal recommender system di YouTube, condotta con tecniche di network analysis su un sample di circa 68mila video musicali in lingua italiana facenti riferimento agli anni '80. Dato il carattere non meramente computazionale dei related videos suggeriti da YouTube – i quali dipendono dai comportamenti di consumo aggregati degli utenti – questa ricerca non punta solo a descrivere una tecnologia. Al contrario, l’obiettivo metodologico ed empirico di questo lavoro consta nell’utilizzare le logiche del medium YouTube per esplorare l’immaginario simbolico che gravita oggi, in Italia, intorno alla musica anni '80, analizzando le “categorie folk” e le associazioni semantiche tra brani, artisti e generi che emergono a partire dalle pratiche di fruizione musicale condivise dai consumatori digitali.