{"title":"No judgment: value optimization and the reinvention of reviewing on YouTube","authors":"Blake Hallinan","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad034","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad034","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Social media platforms employ algorithmic recommendations to optimize the user's experience and incentivize particular forms of cultural production. While prior research shows that creators respond to these incentives and seek to optimize their content in return, the normative implications of this process are ambiguous and contentious. To examine the values promoted by platforms, this study focuses on YouTube reviews, a popular genre that crosses communities and foregrounds values. Employing content and thematic analyses of 200 videos, I find that creators communicate value consistently: good products are aesthetic, functional, distinctive, and either pleasurable or resonant, while good reviewers are relatable above all else. I develop the concept of value optimization to refer to communicative strategies that appeal to the perceived values of a platform and show how creators’ tendency to qualify their evaluations and avoid strong judgments transforms the historical function of reviewing. Finally, I discuss implications for future research on the platformization of cultural production.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"204 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2023-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79194080","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Attitudinal and behavioral correlates of algorithmic awareness among German and U.S. social media users","authors":"Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, German Neubaum","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad035","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract With the increase in algorithms on social media, scholarship is increasingly focused on “algorithmic literacy,” or users’ understanding of algorithms. Algorithmic literacy is multi-faceted (knowledge, attitudes, and behavior), and researchers are still uncovering how these facets are connected. This article presents a preregistered survey of social media users from two western countries: the United States (n = 990) and Germany (n = 1117). Results show key predictors of algorithmic awareness—age, education, frequency of social media use—are the same in both countries. Nevertheless, U.S. social media users show higher algorithmic awareness and more positive attitudes toward algorithms than German social media users, likely due to their higher overall social media usage. Results also indicate that algorithmic awareness predicts attitudes about filtering algorithms depending on users’ defense motivations or accuracy motivations and behaviors to counteract filtering. These patterns have implications for literacy interventions and for increasing algorithmic transparency.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136162865","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Community health workers and the communicative transformation of work-life interrelationships during the COVID-19 pandemic","authors":"A. Golden, J. Jorgenson, Amy Williams","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad009","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study focuses on work-life interrelationships for community health workers (CHWs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. CHWs serve as liaisons between marginalized communities and health and human service organizations to facilitate access to services. Required physical distancing transformed their work from embodied, face-to-face interaction to almost wholly mediated by communication technologies. Interviews were conducted with 52 participants to identify CHWs’ adaptive strategies for communication, consequences of their adaptations for their experience of work and work-life interrelationships, and their communicative management of negative unintended consequences. Communicative practices that were emergent from participant accounts are examined through the lenses of four mutually informing research frameworks: the impact of technologically mediated remote work on work-life interrelationships, technological capital and differentiated digital inequalities, the text work/body work continuum, and gendered emotional work. Implications for the future of community-based care workers and for other workers with respect to communication, technology, and managing work-life boundaries are examined.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81901112","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Y. J. Wu, Brennan Antone, Leslie A. DeChurch, N. Contractor
{"title":"Information sharing in a hybrid workplace: understanding the role of ease-of-use perceptions of communication technologies in advice-seeking relationship maintenance","authors":"Y. J. Wu, Brennan Antone, Leslie A. DeChurch, N. Contractor","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Shifts to hybrid work prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic have the potential to substantially impact social relationships at work. Hybrid employees rely heavily on digital collaboration technologies to communicate and share information. Therefore, employees’ perceptions of the technologies are critical in shaping organizational networks. However, the dyadic-level misalignment in these perceptions may lead to relationship dissolution. To explore the social network consequences of hybrid work, we conducted a two-wave survey in a department of an industrial manufacturing firm (N = 169). Our results show that advice seekers were less likely to maintain their advice-seeking ties when they had a mismatch in ease-of-use perceptions of technology with their advisors. The effect was more substantial when advice seekers spent more time working remotely. The study provides empirical insights into how congruence in employees’ perceptions of organizational communication technologies affects how they maintain advice networks during hybrid work.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"187 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72739843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Toward work’s new futures: Editors’ Introduction to Technology and the Future of Work special issue","authors":"N. Baym, N. Ellison","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad031","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad031","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This special issue is based in the belief that theoretically informed, methodologically diverse, and sociotechnically inspired research is our best approach for understanding contemporary entanglements between the technological and social aspects of work, and for grappling with what that means for our futures. In this Editors’ Introduction to JCMC’s Technology and the Future of Work special issue, we synthesize emergent themes across the eleven papers included and reflect on productive analytic lenses for anticipating how technologies may shape social and work practices, and vice versa. We identify four themes woven across the papers—visibility, relationships, boundaries, and power—and explicate some of the ways that social, technical, temporal, and communicative dimensions of work emerge across a variety of work contexts. Together, these papers highlight the creative, sense-making, and collaborative dynamics of the technologically infused workplace while acknowledging the amorphous nature of work and place, past, present and future.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74997695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Surveillance and the future of work: exploring employees’ attitudes toward monitoring in a post-COVID workplace","authors":"Jessica Vitak, Michael Zimmer","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad007","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 The future of work increasingly focuses on the collection and analysis of worker data to monitor communication, ensure productivity, reduce security threats, and assist in decision-making. The COVID-19 pandemic increased employer reliance on these technologies; however, the blurring of home and work boundaries meant these monitoring tools might also surveil private spaces. To explore workers’ attitudes toward increased monitoring practices, we present findings from a factorial vignette survey of 645 U.S. adults who worked from home during the early months of the pandemic. Using the theory of privacy as contextual integrity to guide the survey design and analysis, we unpack the types of workplace surveillance practices that violate privacy norms and consider attitudinal differences between male and female workers. Our findings highlight that the acceptability of workplace surveillance practices is highly contextual, and that reductions in privacy and autonomy at work may further exacerbate power imbalances, especially for vulnerable employees.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78608479","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Managing collapsed boundaries in global work","authors":"A. Sivunen, Jennifer L. Gibbs, Jonna Leppäkumpu","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Global workers have long contended with the challenges of working across geographical, temporal, and cultural boundaries enabled by communication technologies. However, the global work research has rarely intersected with the literature on work–home boundary management—which has been brought to the forefront due to the forced move to remote work during the Covid-19 pandemic. Drawing on a qualitative field study of 55 in-depth interviews with global workers from a large organization headquartered in the Nordics, we found that global workers drew on sociomaterial affordances to manage both global work and work–home boundaries through strategies of boundary support and boundary collapse. Although the shift to remote work created challenges due to boundary collapse, it presented new spatiotemporal affordances that led to unexpected benefits for both global work and work–life boundary management. The findings have implications for global work, remote work, and the future of work more broadly.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"280 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73173420","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Navigating the empty shell: the role of articulation work in platform structures","authors":"Linda Huber, Casey S. Pierce","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad004","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article explores platform workers’ strategies for producing sustainable, quality services within platform structures that simultaneously over- and under-determine their work. We present findings from interviews with U.S.-based mental health professionals (n = 48) working on teletherapy platforms. These therapists describe navigating both the presence of platformic controls and the absence of features supporting professional best practices and regulatory requirements. We describe this absence as the “empty shell” characteristic of platforms and argue that it is a central technique through which platforms create scale. Our findings detail the communicative strategies therapists employ to navigate the empty shell and provide quality care to their clients. These strategies can be seen as a form of “articulation work,” a concept drawn from the sociology of work. Attending to articulation work in an emerging platform labor context, such as teletherapy, contributes to our understanding of the politics of platforms.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86154303","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pre-framing an emerging technology before it is deployed at work: the case of artificial intelligence and radiology","authors":"M. R. Rezazade Mehrizi","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad029","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Various occupations are increasingly confronted with promises that new technologies will transform their work long before these technologies are deployed in their workplace. Although we know how new technologies are framed when they are introduced to work, we have limited understanding of how practitioners frame an emerging technology before it is deployed. Building on frame literature and examining the case of artificial intelligence (AI) in diagnostic radiology, I show how radiologists go beyond technological promises by engaging in constructing multiple frames ex ante (pre-frames). These pre-frames are neither technology-centric nor work-centric, but rather are dialectic technology–work frames, through which their accounts of both technology and work are simultaneously (re)constructed. They not only help radiologists settle around certain ways of relating AI to their work, but also unsettle their accounts by unearthing unresolved debates, raising new questions, and impelling them to consider divergent reaction strategies.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78524922","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Positioning in a collaboration network and performance in competitions: a case study of Kaggle","authors":"Marlon Twyman, Goran Muric, Weiwei Zheng","doi":"10.1093/jcmc/zmad024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/jcmc/zmad024","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Online innovation competitions are ecosystems where institutions source numerous solutions from knowledge workers through a platform intermediary. By considering how an individual competitor’s performance varies based on their social positioning in a competition ecosystem’s collaboration network, we illustrate the value of social networks for individual outcomes in online competitions. The study reports results from Kaggle, a popular online competition platform for data science, where a sample of 350,956 users participated in 2,789 competitions over 4 years. We investigate how the number of collaborations, membership in the largest connected component in the network, and diversity of collaboration experiences impact the points and medals earned and how quickly competitors earn their first medal. Results show that positioning has a positive relationship with performance in competitive ecosystems. Relevant to the future of work, the study considers how knowledge workers in future workplaces should manage their online collaborations.","PeriodicalId":48319,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.2,"publicationDate":"2023-06-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84701849","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}