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In June 2017, The Human Data Commons Foundation released its first annual Quantified Self Report Card. This project consisted of a qualitative review of the privacy policy documentation of 55 private sector companies in the self-tracking and biometric data industry. Two researchers recorded their ratings on concrete criteria for each company’s website, as well as providing a blend of objective and subjective ratings on the overall ease of readability and navigability within each site’s documentation. This chapter explains the unique context of user privacy rights within the Quantified Self tracking industry, and summarises the overall results from the 2017 Quantified Self Report Card. The tension between user privacy and data sharing in commercial data-collection practices is explored and the authors provide insight into possibilities for resolving these tensions. The self-as-instrument in research is touched on in autoethnographic narrative confronting and interrogating the difficult process of immersive qualitative analytics in relation to such intensely complex and personal issues as privacy and ubiquitous dataveillance. Drawing upon excerpted reflections from the Report Card’s co-author, a few concluding thoughts are shared on freedom and choice. Finally, goals for next year’s Quantified Self Report Card are revealed, and a call extended for public participation.

This chapter describes how the technologies of big data might apply to rural contexts. It considers the relative advantages and disadvantages of such ‘new’ innovations.

It uses two case studies, one of online community specialist groups linked to rural activities and a second from a policy shift relating to firearm legislation in the English context.

The chapter suggests that digital data in the forms discussed here can be both benign and underutilised in its potential. In relation to the management of datasets holding information on firearm owners, these need careful reflection regarding their establishment, access and general use.

The chapter provides insight into the rural context and makes a case that such locales are not immune from the influence of the dataverse. The appearance of ‘big data’ here is not without political implications. The case of UK firearm legislation reform demonstrates the implications of policy falling short of its potential and how a social science analysis can unpack the operation of power as well as position the debate more broadly.

Overseas Chinese business networks have had a profound effect on the economic development of mainland China and on the global economy as a whole. Such networks are based predominantly on familial, language and cultural factors and provide a foundation on which business is conducted, often with reduced transaction costs and with resilience to major shifts in the financial markets. This paper aims to explore business networks in the US Chinese diaspora.

The paper begins with a brief introduction to the concept of ethnic business networks. Subsequent sections provide historical background on the Chinese diaspora and the role Chinese business networks have played around the world. An examination of how such networks have evolved in the US context follows. Finally, implications are discussed and a research agenda is suggested.

It is suggested that a different type of business networking pattern has evolved in the US context, one that is less reliant on the traditional pillars of family, language and culture and more on intellectual capital.

No empirical evidence is presented here. However, a research agenda is specified.

Relatively little has been written that specifically addresses the US Chinese business experience, which differs in several important ways from other groups in the Chinese diaspora. This paper examines this branch of the Chinese diaspora, focusing on the networking behaviors among professionals, including those that have most recently emerged in the high tech sector.

The purpose of this study is to offer a roadmap for work on the ethical and societal implications of algorithms and AI. Based on an analysis of the social, technical and regulatory challenges posed by algorithmic systems in Korea, this work conducts socioecological evaluations of the governance of algorithmic transparency and accountability.

This paper analyzes algorithm design and development from critical socioecological angles: social, technological, cultural and industrial phenomena that represent the strategic interaction among people, technology and society, touching on sensitive issues of a legal, a cultural and an ethical nature.

Algorithm technologies are a part of a social ecosystem, and its development should be based on user interests and rights within a social and cultural milieu. An algorithm represents an interrelated, multilayered ecosystem of networks, protocols, applications, services, practices and users.

Value-sensitive algorithm design is proposed as a novel approach for designing algorithms. As algorithms have become a constitutive technology that shapes human life, it is essential to be aware of the value-ladenness of algorithm development. Human values and social issues can be reflected in an algorithm design.

The arguments in this study help ensure the legitimacy and effectiveness of algorithms. This study provides insight into the challenges and opportunities of algorithms through the lens of a socioecological analysis: political discourse, social dynamics and technological choices inherent in the development of algorithm-based ecology.

The purpose of the chapter is to argue for a twofold understanding of knowledge organization: the organization of knowledge as a form of communicative action in digital culture and the organization of knowledge as an analytical means to address features of digital culture.

The approach taken is an interpretative text-based form of argumentation.

The chapter suggests that by putting forward such a twofold understanding of knowledge organization, new directions are given as to how to situate and understand the activity and practice of the organization of knowledge in digital culture.

By offering the twofold understanding of the organization of knowledge, a tool of reflection is provided when users and the public at large try to make sense of, for example, data, archives, search engines, or algorithms.

The originality of the chapter is its demonstration of how to conceive of knowledge organization as a form of communicative action and as an analytical means for understanding issues in digital culture.

This chapter critically evaluates the literature on digital consumer data and the ways in which it can be used in digital social research. The chapter illuminates how researchers have to conceptualise and negotiate digital data, focusing upon ethical and procedural challenges of employing digital methods.

The chapter draws upon and integrates a broad research literature from sociology, digital media studies, business and marketing, as these have opened up new directions for research design and method. It advocates interdisciplinary approaches to conceptualising what digital data is employing the concept of ‘marketing narratives’ to understand how the new visibilities of consumer data are shaped by related processes of branding and the interactivity of content.

The chapter shows how the capacities of digital technologies present significant challenges for researchers and organisations that have to be carefully negotiated if the potentials of digital consumer data are to be harnessed. In addition, researchers should pay attention to novel issues of ethical responsibility in the context of the longer-term presence of data records.

The chapter offers a set of guidelines for digital social researchers in negotiating the meanings of visible digital consumer data, the ethical and proprietary issues involved in utilising digital methods.

Digital intermediaries such as Google and Facebook are seen as the new powerbrokers in online news, controlling access to consumers and with the potential even to suppress and target messages to individuals. Academics, publishers and policymakers have raised concerns about the implications of this new power, from the impact on media plurality to implications for democratic discourse, freedom of speech and control over public opinion formation. After reviewing academic literature that has raised this concern and public policy addressing it, this paper aims to examine the empirical foundations for these claims. Through secondary analysis of industry data on referrals of online news traffic, the authors find that intermediaries do have the potential to exert significant influence over distribution of online news. The authors however find that not all news that is filtered through intermediary services is subject to the same shaping and editorial forces, in part, because user agency is also an important factor. The role of intermediaries in news distribution is thus complex; headline numbers do not translate automatically into influence due to the complex interplay and exchange between user agency and the editorial influence of intermediaries.

This paper is based mainly on a secondary analysis of publicly available data on news referrals, and some data provided by news publishers along with re-analysis of regulatory data from Ofcom and previously unpublished data from the BBC and SimilarWeb. These data sources are combined for the first time to investigate claims regarding the current controversy about media plurality, algorithmic power and transparency.

The paper finds that evidence that intermediaries wield concentrated editorial power is mixed. While other, non-intermediated news distribution platforms such as TV and the press remain highly important, online is heading towards being the most important distribution platform, particularly for younger demographics. The authors found that intermediaries such as search and social control access to a significant proportion of online news content. Not all use of intermediaries is indicative of online gatekeeping however. User agency also determines how content is prioritised and thus consumed. The news consumed is therefore a product of a complex interplay between user agency and intermediary influence. In contrast to traditional discussions of media power and its regulation (for example the notion of mass media plurality); it is thus not possible to make inferences on influence simply by noting the market share of intermediaries. The role of intermediaries is much more subtle and opaque.

This paper is mainly based on publicly available data. It is crucial to find out what is possible with such data as regulators with responsibility for monitoring and regulating media plurality are similarly limited to such data. The implications are that further research with a wide range of methods and data sources will be necessary to update research on media plurality and diversity.

The implications of these findings are that independent public authorities should have access to much more revealing data about public opinion formation processes, including referrals and other data currently held only by publishers. The three stage analytical framework will be of use to regulators and policymakers currently looking into these issues.

Civil society and public debate about digital intermediaries is currently intensively discussed in policy debate. Taking these debates forward will depend on whether existing public policy frameworks (such as limits on news plurality) are able to accommodate the new challenges such as intermediary influence on news distribution and public opinion formation.

The recent special issue of INFO, including contributions from Mansell and Helberger, raised a range of similar issues with regard to media plurality and intermediaries. These papers did not seek empirically to examine in depth, using all available publicly relevant data, the implications for media pluralism and diversity in one particular media market. The paper is theoretically original, contains some previously unpublished data and an entirely new empirical and theoretical analysis. The models and tables are previously unpublished.