Machine learning is increasingly involved in both our production and consumption of video. One symptom of this is the appearance of automated video editing applications. As this technology spreads rapidly to consumers, the need for substantive research about its social impact grows. To this end, this project maintains a focus on video editing as a microcosm of larger shifts in cultural objects co-authored by artificial intelligence. The window in which this research occurred (2010-2015) saw machine learning move increasingly into the public eye, and with it ethical concerns. What follows is, on the most abstract level, a discussion of why these ethical concerns are particularly urgent in the realm of the moving image. Algorithmic editing consists of software instructions to automate the creation of timelines of moving images. The criteria that this software uses to query a database is variable. Algorithmic authorship already exists in other media, but I will argue that the moving image is a separate case insofar as the raw material of text and music software can develop on its own. The performance of a trained actor can still not be generated by software. Thus, my focus is on the relationship between live embodied performance, and the subsequent algorithmic editing of that footage. This is a process that can employ other software like computer vision (to analyze the content of video) and predictive analytics (to guess what kind of automated film to make for a given user). How is performance altered when it has to communicate to human and non-human alike? The ritual of the iterative frame gives literal form to something that throughout human history has been a projection: the omniscient participant observer, more commonly known as the Divine. We experience black boxed software (AI's, specifically neural networks, which are intrinsically opaque) as functionally omniscient and tacitly allow it to edit more and more of life (e.g. filtering articles, playlists and even potential spouses). As long as it remains disembodied, we will continue to project the Divine on to the black box, causing cultural anxiety. In other words, predictive analytics alienate us from the source code of our cultural texts. The iterative frame then is a space in which these forces can be inscribed on the body, and hence narrated. The algorithmic editing of content is already taken for granted. The editing of moving images, in contrast, still requires a human hand. We need to understand the social power of moving image editing before it is delegated to automation. Practice Section: This project is practice-led, meaning that the portfolio of work was produced as it was being theorized. To underscore this, the portfolio comes at the end of the document. Video editors use artificial intelligence (AI) in a number of different applications, from deciding the sequencing of timelines to using facial and language detection to find actors in archives. This changes traditional production workflows on a number of levels. How can the single decision cut a between two frames of video speak to the larger epistemological shifts brought on by predictive analytics and Big Data (upon which they rely)? When predictive analytics begin modeling the world of moving images, how will our own understanding of the world change? In the practice-based section of this thesis, I explore how these shifts will change the way in which actors might approach performance. What does a gesture mean to AI and how will the editor decontextualize it? The set of a video shoot that will employ an element of AI in editing represents a move towards ritualization of production, summarized in the term the 'iterative frame'. The portfolio contains eight works that treat the set was taken as a microcosm of larger shifts in the production of culture. There is, I argue, metaphorical significance in the changing understanding of terms like 'continuity' and 'sync' on the AI-watched set. Theory Section In the theoretical section, the approach is broadly comparative. I contextualize the current dynamic by looking at previous shifts in technology that changed the relationship between production and post-production, notably the lightweight recording technology of the 1960s. This section also draws on debates in ethnographic filmmaking about the matching of film and ritual. In this body of literature, there is a focus on how participant observation can be formalized in film. Triangulating between event, participant observer and edit grammar in ethnographic filmmaking provides a useful analogy in understanding how AI as film editor might function in relation to contemporary production. Rituals occur in a frame that is dependent on a spatially/temporally separate observer. This dynamic also exists on sets bound for post-production involving AI, The convergence of film grammar and ritual grammar occurred in the 1960s under the banner of cinéma vérité in which the relationship between participant observer/ethnographer and the subject became most transparent. In Rouch and Morin's Chronicle of a Summer (1961), reflexivity became ritualized in the form of on-screen feedback sessions. The edit became transparent-the black box of cinema disappeared. Today as artificial intelligence enters the film production process this relationship begins to reverse-feedback, while it exists, becomes less transparent. The weight of the feedback ritual gets gradually shifted from presence and production to montage and post-production. Put differently, in cinéma vérité, the participant observer was most present in the frame. As participant observation gradually becomes shared with code it becomes more difficult to give it an embodied representation and thus its presence is felt more in the edit of the film. The relationship between the ritual actor and the participant observer (the algorithm) is completely mediated by the edit, a reassertion of the black box, where once it had been transparent. The crucible for looking at the relationship between algorithmic editing, participant observation and the black box is the subject in trance. In ritual trance the individual is subsumed by collective codes. Long before the advent of automated editing trance was an epistemological problem posed to film editing. In the iterative frame, for the first time, film grammar can echo ritual grammar and indeed become continuous with it. This occurs through removing the act of cutting from the causal world, and projecting this logic of post-production onto performance. Why does this occur? Ritual and specifically ritual trance is the moment when a culture gives embodied form to what it could not otherwise articulate. The trance of predictive analytics-the AI that increasingly choreographs our relationship to information-is the ineffable that finds form in the iterative frame. In the iterative frame a gesture never exists in a single instance, but in a potential state. The performers in this frame begin to understand themselves in terms of how automated indexing processes reconfigure their performance. To the extent that gestures are complicit with this mode of databasing they can be seen as votive toward the algorithmic. The practice section focuses on the poetics of this position. Chapter One focuses on cinéma vérité as a moment in which the relationship between production and post-production shifted as a function of more agile recording technology, allowing the participant observer to enter the frame. This shift becomes a lens to look at changes that AI might bring. Chapter Two treats the work of Pierre Huyghe as a 'liminal phase' in which a new relationship between production and post-production is explored. Finally, Chapter Three looks at a film in which actors perform with awareness that footage will be processed by an algorithmic edit. / The conclusion looks at the implications this way of relating to AI-especially commercial AI-through embodied performance could foster a more critical relationship to the proliferating black-boxed modes of production.

This thesis is a study of ethics and multiplicity as found within contemporary commercial settings. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) sensibilities and ethnographic-style research, the thesis proposes that current ethical phenomena should be understood as a user-enacted chimerical object: an object that is multiple in its ontology and as much enacted by what it is, as what it is not. This research is particularly pertinent now because the term 'ethical' has become commonplace in modern Western life, including crucially within commercial activities. In certain uses, doing ethics becomes synonymous with doing business. Despite the increasing prevalence of what is considered 'ethical business', the exploration of how the term is appropriated and enacted remains largely under-examined. Through examination of research material gathered during extensive ethnographic studies in three self-avowedly 'ethical organisations' - an ethical start-up, an ethical confectionery company, and an ethical consultancy - the thesis addresses this research gap. By focusing on the users of ethical business, the investigation questions traditional market assumptions of homogeneity within producing organisations, the supposed linear transfer of ethical knowledge, what we can know about 'users', and the genesis of novel ethical realities. Through this questioning the thesis provides new insights on the ethical object. The thesis additionally builds upon questions of how far we can push the boundaries of what we can know about knowledge, and whether it is possible to bring the mess of investigation back into the reporting. Developing previous applications of constitutive reflexivity, the research symmetrically investigates the appropriateness of my application of STS sensibilities to ethical business as a new research area, and interrogates my thesis as an ethical object in order to address the underlying question(s) of whether 'STS means ethical business?'

This thesis is about the historical geography of scientific knowledge production at sea. It focuses on three expeditions of exploration and discovery undertaken, respectively, by France, the United States of America, and Britain, that in the late 1830s sailed into the southern oceans. These voyages marked the last such expeditions to travel by sail alone and came before an acknowledged period of specialized interest in investigating the oceans and the marine environment, exemplified by the sailing of HMS Challenger in 1872. The expeditions share a commonality of period and of destination: their study together provides a hitherto overlooked opportunity to analyse practices of experimentation on, and investigation of, the natural history and physical properties of the marine environment that were integral to the construction of scientific knowledge about the oceans at that time. By attention to archival records, personal correspondence, diaries, published travel narratives and representations of marine phenomena in the form of illustrations, sketches, preserved specimens and displays of numerical material, this thesis examines quotidian shipboard practices to show how the production of scientific ‘facts’ was a matter of constant negotiation between people, weather, instruments and vessels – that occurred as a by-product of the running of the ship as well as of more defined programmes of study by civilian naturalists and naval staff. Informed by work in the history of science, Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this thesis highlights how attending to practice in the ambiguous, heterotopic space that was the expedition vessel can reveal the origins of a new, specialized, discipline: what I call here a proto-oceanography. This covers those scientific practices undertaken primarily at sea and from the ship: depth measurement, sea temperature and chemistry, the height of waves, collection of marine specimens and coastal topography, but not those primarily land-based activities such as astronomy, meteorology and terrestrial magnetism. By focusing on work carried out on board ship rather than on land, this thesis offers new insights into the practices of marine investigation and experimentation and the complexities of interrogating a space which was visualised primarily through instruments. This thesis examines how at-sea cultures of collection, measurement and representation can inform geographically nuanced analyses of the production of scientific knowledge.

Habitués à considérer que la science est dépourvue d’émotions et à opposer l’émotion à la raison, les scientifiques n'ont pu reconnaitre la place centrale qu'occupent les affects dans leurs pratiques de recherche. Cette thèse se propose d'appréhender le rôle joué par de multiples affects et émotions dans la diffusion de la notion scientifique de Services Écosystémiques (SE) à partir d’une étude multi-sites informée par des entretiens avec des scientifiques et des praticiens de la conservation de la nature ainsi que par des observations participantes de leur travail et de leurs interactions. Émergeant du contexte apocalyptique d'anxiété suscité par la dégradation de l'environnement, la notion de SE offre un espoir aux protecteurs de la nature par le fait qu'elle combine l'écologie et l'économie et souligne la dépendance des sociétés humaines au fonctionnement des écosystèmes. La thèse montre comment la notion a attiré et même séduit un nombre croissant de scientifiques. Ceux-ci ont élaboré des jeux participatifs, des scénarios et des cartes pour communiquer avec des gestionnaires des espaces naturels et des décideurs politiques en créant des atmosphères émotionnelles spécifiques. Dans le domaine de la protection de la nature, la notion a touché de nouveaux publics, motivés non seulement par un amour de la nature ou par un sens de la responsabilité, mais aussi par de l'espoir et un sens de l’opportunité. Documenter comment la vie affective des SE s'est formée dans les rencontres entre les scientifiques et les praticiens, comment elle a été ciblée par de multiples formes de pouvoir, et comment elle a interagi avec des conditions affectives collectives, met en évidence l’importance méthodologique des affects et des émotions et leurs aptitudes à médier et organiser la vie sociale, y compris dans la science. / The tendency to view science as void of emotions and to oppose emotion and reason has prevented acknowledging the central place of affects in research practices. Drawing on a multi-site study informed by interviews with scientists and conservation practitioners, and participatory observation of their work and interaction, this thesis attends to the role played by multiple affects and emotions in the diffusion of the scientific notion of Ecosystem Services (ES). Emerging from the apocalyptic context of and anxiety over environmental degradation, ES offers hope for conservationists by combining ecology and economics, and by illuminating the dependence of human societies on the functioning of ecosystems. The thesis shows how the notion has attracted and even seduced ES scientists. ES scientists, then, designed participatory games, scenarios and maps to interact with nature managers and decision-makers through specific emotional atmospheres. In nature conservation, the notion reached new kinds of affective publics not only motivated by a love of nature or a sense of responsibility, but also by hopefulness and a sense of opportunity. Documenting how the affective life of ES has formed in encounters between scientists and practitioners, how it has been targeted by multiple forms of power, and how it has interacted with collective affective conditions, the thesis emphasises the methodological significance of affects and emotions and the varied ways in which they mediate and organise social life, including science.

Insecure cyber behavior of end users may expose their computers to cyber-attack. A first step to improve their cyber behavior is to identify their tendency toward insecure cyber behavior. Unfortunately, not much work has been done in this area. In particular, the relationship between end users cyber behavior and their personality traits is much less explored. This paper presents a comprehensive review of a newly developed, easily configurable, and flexible software SPICE for psychologist and cognitive scientists to study personality traits and insecure cyber behavior of end users. The software utilizes well-established cognitive methods (such as dot-probe) to identify number of personality traits, and further allows researchers to design and conduct experiments and detailed quantitative study on the cyber behavior of end users. The software collects fine-grained data on users for analysis.

Purpose: The Internet has provided an unprecedented opportunity for psychotropic medication consumers, a traditionally silenced group in clinical trial research, to have voice by contributing to the construction of drug knowledge in an immediate, direct manner. Currently, there are no systematic appraisals of the potential of online consumer drug reviews to contribute to drug knowledge. The purpose of this research was to explore the content of drug information on various websites representing themselves as consumer- and expert-constructed, and as a practical consideration, to examine how each source may help and hinder treatment decision-making. Methodology: A mixed-methods research strategy utilizing a grounded theory approach was used to analyze drug information on 5 exemplar websites (3 consumer- and 2 expert-constructed) for 2 popularly prescribed psychotropic drugs (escitalopram and quetiapine). A stratified simple random sample was used to select 1,080 consumer reviews from the websites (N=7,114) through February 2009. Text was coded using QDA Miner 3.2 software by Provalis Research. A combination of frequency tables, descriptive excerpts from text, and chi-square tests for association were used throughout analyses. Findings: The most frequently mentioned effects by consumers taking either drug were related to psychological/behavioral symptoms and sleep. Consumers reported many of the same effects as found on expert health sites, but provided more descriptive language and situational examples. Expert labels of less serious on certain effects were not congruent with the sometimes tremendous burden described by consumers. Consumers mentioned more than double the themes mentioned in expert text, and demonstrated a diversity and range of discourses around those themes. Conclusions: Drug effects from each source were complete relative to the information provided in the other, but each also offered distinct advantages. Expert health sites provided concise summaries of medications’ effects, while consumer reviews had the added advantage of concrete descriptions and greater context. In short, consumer reviews better prepared potential consumers for what it’s like to take psychotropic drugs. Both sources of information benefit clinicians and consumers in making informed treatment-related decisions. Social work practitioners are encouraged to thoughtfully utilize online consumer drug reviews as a legitimate additional source for assisting clients in learning about treatment options.

<p>In this thesis, I investigate the effects of social and political context on the process and outcomes of science communication in two different settings, using Dietram Scheufele’s interpretation of science communication as political communication. </p> <p>In the first setting, I examine the communication of climate tipping points at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) using 26 semi-structured interviews and 271 surveys administered to members of the UNFCCC policy community. Survey results revealed that only a small minority (14.3%) of policymakers defined climate tipping points consistently with the scientific community. Interview responses revealed that many policymakers believed they were not responsible for incorporating new scientific advice into their work on negotiations, and that this was the responsibility of scientists. Scientists interviewed expressed frustration that policymakers were not willing to hear scientific information they saw as irrelevant to their work on the negotiations. Policymakers responding to interviews were also unwilling to defy social norms by introducing a topic they saw as “complicated” into negotiations. Interview respondents who believed climate tipping points should be discussed within formal negotiations also noted that they interpreted the effects of climate change as temporally or spatially immediate to themselves. </p> <p>In the second setting, I examine how the United States print media incorporated discussion of climate change into coverage of the 2017 hurricane season via a content analysis of hurricane coverage in six major US newspapers. Conservative papers and liberal papers displayed significant differences in frequency and directness of references to climate change, as well as a significant difference in the references to climate denial messages, climate consensus messages, and use of proximity cues. However, the conservative paper near a 2017 hurricane consistently displayed significant differences in coverage from the other conservative papers. This paper frequently used social norms in messaging to shift narratives of acceptability of climate change discussion among conservatives. Both conservative and liberal papers near a 2017 hurricane used proximity cues to indicate the effects of climate change are both physically and temporally near at greater rates than elite and regional papers not near a 2017 hurricane.</p> <p>Taken together, these results reveal that three major factors influenced climate change communication in these two settings. First, power to define direction and content of science communication explains the lack of communication about climate tipping points at the UNFCCC. Policymakers’ hold legitimate power over science communication. This power is codified within UNFCCC structure. Policymakers’ expert power is also interpreted as more relevant to negotiations processes than scientists’ expert power; meaning policymakers are free to define what information is “policy relevant” and therefore, what is communicated. Second, social norms influenced how and whether communication occurred. Social norms prohibiting behavior disruptive to consensus building influenced policymaker definitions of “policy relevant.” Social norms among US conservatives prohibiting serious discussion of climate tipping points were also apparent. Finally, perceptions of climate change as immediate and nearby seemed related to willingness to defy social norms around climate change communication. </p> <p> </p> <p> </p>

Cette recherche prend pour objet l’Union bancaire, à savoir la principale réforme des institutions de l’Union européenne souhaitée par les chefs d’État et de gouvernement en réponse à la crise financière de 2008. La réforme confie notamment à la Banque centrale européenne la charge de superviser les banques de la zone euro à partir de novembre 2014. À la croisée d’une sociologie de la finance en discussion avec une sociologie des sciences et des techniques, et d’une sociologie politique attentive aux instruments d’action publique, la thèse propose d’analyser les nouvelles pratiques de supervision comme un problème de gouvernement au sens de Michel Foucault. Elle décrit ainsi l’Union bancaire comme un agencement institutionnel, à savoir un assemblage d’acteurs, de pratiques de vérification et de dispositifs de contrôle, au sein duquel s’invente une forme inédite d’intervention. Cet agencement produit une expertise européenne centralisée sur un territoire de gouvernement. Sur celui-ci, la problématisation de la bonne conduite des établissements vise à garantir un devenir pérenne des actifs des investisseurs, sans agir de façon dirigiste sur les flux financiers. Les autorités de supervision des États prenant part à l’agencement sont en charge de relayer les décisions collectivement actées à Francfort sur leurs banques considérées comme nationales. La thèse contribue aux débats académiques contemporains relatifs à la finance et à la construction européenne, en rendant visibles par l’enquête les effets d’une action publique tournée vers le problème de la gestion de l’investissement en Europe. Elle permet notamment de saisir la recomposition des souverainetés étatiques en matière de politique bancaire qui, loin de s’effacer, jouent un rôle décisif dans la constitution du territoire étudié. Les développements sont élaborés à partir d’une enquête qualitative, incluant une ethnographie de l’Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), une campagne d’entretiens et une analyse documentaire. / This research is focused on the Banking Union, the main reform of the European Union's institutions called for by the Heads of State and Government in response to the 2008 financial crisis. This reform entrusts the European Central Bank in particular with the task of supervising banks in the euro zone from November 2014. At the crossroads of a sociology of finance in discussion with a sociology of science and technology studies, and a political sociology, the thesis proposes to analyse new supervisory practices as a problem of government in the sense defined by Michel Foucault. The Banking Union is portrayed as an institutional arrangement, namely an assemblage of actors, auditing practices and control devices, at the heart of which a new form of intervention is invented. The purpose of this arrangement is to produce a centralized European expertise on a developing territory of government. In this territory, the problematization of good banking conduct aims at ensuring a sustainable future for investors' assets without acting on the financial flows in a constraining way. The supervisory authorities of the states involved in the arrangement are now in charge of applying the decisions made collectively in Frankfurt about banks still considered as national. Through this inquiry, the thesis contributes to contemporary debates on finance and on the European construction by enlightening the effects of public policies geared towards the issue of investment management in Europe. It especially improves our understanding of the reshaping of national sovereignties in banking policies, and shows that far from disappearing, those play a decisive role in the constitution of the territory studied. Developments are based on a qualitative inquiry, including an ethnography of the Autorité de contrôle prudentiel et de résolution (ACPR), an interview campaign and a documentary analysis.

Networks are an integral part of everyday life. Today, public concern with the extent to which they influence people’s routines, and how much they affect cultures and societies, has grown substantially. People are thus now engaging in conversations and movements to evaluate and address the biases and discriminatory behaviours to which networks contribute. The media play an important part in this conversation, often directing the discourse towards fears of technology. Although such concerns are very real, the stories that media circulate typically rely on the “magical” nature of networks and therefore accentuate their figurative power. But, for people to participate meaningfully in the conversation, and for them to approach technologies responsibly, they need access to the complexities and technical intricacies of networks, not just their surfaces or metaphors. This dissertation argues that, by listening to networks, people can begin to apprehend, and even comprehend, the complex, ostensibly “magical” nature of their communications. One problem is that listening semantically to networks is incredibly difficult, if not impossible. Networks are very noisy, and they do not, for instance, use alphabetic language for internal or external communication. Yet there are other ways to hear and interpret them. I argue that Michel Chion’s techniques of reduced and causal listening are two such ways, and that they afford a “sensible” and timely method for approaching networks. Of course, network communications must first be rendered audible to hear them. For this purpose, I propose “tactical network sonification” (TNS) as a methodology for Science and Technology Studies (STS). As this dissertation’s primary contribution to the field of STS, TNS focuses on making the materiality of networks sensibly accessible to the general public, especially people who are not technology experts. In so doing, TNS builds on the scholarship of not only Chion but also Beth Coleman, Matthew Kirschenbaum, Henri Lefebvre, Shannon Mattern, Shintaro Miyazaki, Pauline Oliveros, Rita Raley, and Jonathan Sterne in particular. This project finds that TNS results in crowded sound clips that represent the complexity of network infrastructure, through the many overlapping rhythms and layers of sound that each clip contains. It explains that sonifications may assist in creating multimodal network stories, making networks sensible and apprehendable. Finally, this dissertation proposes that using TNS can help understand potential discriminatory distribution of network infrastructure across communities. / Graduate / 2021-12-18

abstract: Universities and colleges in the United States (U.S.) are in a period of rapid transformation. Driven by the need for an educated workforce, higher education institutions are responding to rapid innovation, globalization, economic realities, and sociodemographic shifts. Simultaneously, extensive educational online networks connect millions of people worldwide enable learning and knowledge sharing beyond what society has experienced to date. In light of technological advancements, the preservation and presentation of certain ideals that undergird academia and the communication and application of knowledge are undergoing dramatic change. Within higher education, this is both a challenge and an opportunity to re-envision the commitment to educate the public. This research discusses potential forms of this redesign and how it can build upon and depart from previous iterations of higher education. How colleges and universities will adapt to become more relevant, engaging, and accessible is a pressing question that must be addressed. Using case studies focused on creating sustainability education materials, this dissertation develops knowledge related to three interconnected areas of study that will contribute to redesigning higher education through participatory action research methodology. First, higher education has a civic responsibility to provide new ways of thinking, being, and doing globally and providing more access to education to broader society, especially through public research institutions. Second, with a vast array of available learning materials, higher education should invest in elegantly-designed experiences consisting of well-reasoned, meticulously-curated, and high-quality content that is aesthetically appealing, engaging, and accessible to a broad audience. Third, as universities transition from the gatekeepers of knowledge to the connectors of knowledge, they also need to ensure that a coherent mission is articulated and invested in by stakeholders to create an intentionally beneficial transformational effort. The transformation of higher education toward a more inclusive learning environment through new ways of thinking and elegantly-designed learning experiences will serve to improve our learning institutions. As part of the necessary core for an educated democracy, higher education institutions must strive to create a more equitable, inclusive, and diverse society. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology 2020