Ignacio Siles
Biographic Data
| ID | 277122 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ignacio Siles |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ignacio |
| FAMILY NAME | Siles |
| SIGNATURE | SILES I |
| AFFILIATIONS | Universidad de Costa Rica |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9725-8694 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 46 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 187 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 46 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Negotiating the Influencer Imaginary: How Everyday Professionals Construct Legitimacy on Social Media
This article examines how professionals in diverse fields create content on social media as part of their efforts to establish professional legitimacy. Existing scholarship has primarily focused on influencers and creators whose work relies financially on digital content production. Instead, we analyze the experiences of what we call everyday professionals: individuals who pursue full-time occupations while selectively adopting elements of the in…
This program was brought to you by the algorithm: Rethinking television via TikTok
The days of television have repeatedly been deemed over. Today, we are told, television is a dying medium replaced by viral and new digital platforms like TikTok where millions gather every day to consume content. This paper is an extended literature review of television and TikTok scholarship to highlight similarities and differences amongst key concepts in both fields. By focusing on political economy, textual analysis, and audience/reception s…
Resisting by being invisible: Theorising infrapolitical algorithmic actions on Douyin (Chinese TikTok)
Users increasingly resist algorithms through subtle practices woven into everyday life. While scholarship on user resistance is growing, insufficient studies theorise such ‘invisible’ behaviours. This article develops James C. Scott’s notion of ‘infrapolitics’ to conceptualise users’ mundane tactics of resisting algorithmic power (surveillance capitalism and political censorship). Employing a video diary–interview study of Douyin users, we analys…
Revitalising the Concept of the Everyday in Internet Research
In an academic milieu in which a lot of critical attention is dedicated to the data-grabbing, algorithmically biased, and asymmetrical power of massive techno-corporations, this panel explores how a focus on situated ordinary practices can provide us with a more complex, nuanced, and even at times contradictory account of what happens when pervasive digital technologies are experienced in everyday life. It does so via a combination of empirical r…
Rewatching Content on Streaming Platforms: The Pursuit of Ontological Comfort
Why do people tend to rewatch series and films when they have numerous new options at their disposal? This article develops the notion of rewatching on streaming platforms as an essential and enduring aspect of televisuality. Our analysis draws from diary reports completed during one month by 40 streaming platform users in Costa Rica, as well as focus group conversations with 13 of these participants. We examine rewatching as a pursuit of ontolog…
From Feed to Flow: Watching Television on TikTok
This paper investigates how users engage with content on TikTok that was originally produced for television. Based on interviews with participants in Costa Rica, we argue that watching television content on TikTok provides valuable insights into the future trajectories of both television and new media. To this end, we first demonstrate that TikTok’s television flow (in Raymond Williams’ sense) is “co-programed” through user interaction with algor…
Rumo a uma teoria popular de algoritmos
his paper establishes dialogs between theories on the popular and critical studies on algorithms and datafication. In doing so, it contributes to reversing the analytical tendency to assume that algorithms have universal effects and that conclusions about “algorithmic power” in the Global North apply unproblematically every-where else. We begin by clarifying how Latin American scholars and other research traditions have theorized the popular (“lo…
The mutual configuration of affordances and technological frames: Content creators in the Chilean influencer industry
Examining the case of the Chilean influencer industry, this paper argues for situating affordances within a wider context in which the features of platforms acquire meanings. Our analysis focuses on two dynamics. On the one hand, we examine how the Chilean influencer industry is shaped by a ‘technological frame’ that structures the valence of affordances. We show that affordances are neither ‘naturally’ nor ‘neutrally’ imagined by actors but rath…
Fluid agency in relation to algorithms: Tensions, mediations, and transversalities
This paper argues for a fluid approach to the study of agency in relation to algorithms, one that promotes crossing the boundaries of established analytical positions and breaking away from dualistic forms to frame its study. Building on various intellectual traditions, we develop three sensibilities for implementing such an approach: (a) working with tensions as an alternative to thinking about algorithmic power and human agency as an either/or …
Predictores individuales para la detección y difusión de desinformación sobre Covid-19 a través de WhatsApp
Este estudio examina predictores cognitivos, ideológicos y sociodemográficos de la detección e intención de compartir desinformación sobre el COVID-19 vía WhatsApp. Mediante una encuesta en línea, una muestra convencional de 553 adultos costarricenses fue expuestos a contenidos desinformativos sobre vacunas y la respuesta estatal a la pandemia. Los resultados muestran que las personas que apoyan ideologías autoritarias, conservadora y pro-Estado,…
Learning to like TikTok . . . and not: Algorithm awareness as process
This article analyzes algorithm awareness as a process—a series of activities intended to reach a goal over time. It examines how a group of Costa Ricans understood, felt about, and related to TikTok and its algorithms as they began using the app for the first time. Data come from diary entries completed by 43 participants about their use of TikTok over a month and seven focus groups with these diarists. The article discusses five activities thro…
Tropicalizing platformization? Tensions in research on algorithms and platforms in Latin America
This short article critically examines the growing body of research on algorithms and platforms in Latin America. Drawing on an analysis of articles published in Portuguese or Spanish in journals of the region, we discuss the main analytical approaches that shape Latin American platformization research. We reveal a tension between two dominant analytical orientations. On one hand, there is a tendency to directly apply concepts and theories from t…
Algorithmic governmentality in Latin America: Sociotechnical imaginaries, neocolonial soft power, and authoritarianism
Latin America stands as one of the most unequal regions globally, where economic and social crises persist regardless of the ideological leanings of the ruling governments. Many countries in the region grapple with pervasive issues such as corruption, impunity, and a lack of adherence to the rule of law. In this context of generalized crisis, governments have turned to discourses of innovation and technological progress to justify their actions, …
Algorithms as facts and fabrications: Ethnographic stories of factishes from the Costa Rican Caribbean
How do algorithms shape the experience of facts? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Limón, Costa Rica, this paper explores the role of algorithms in mediating three kinds of “factishes”: data truths, affective facts, and mystic revelations. The article unfolds as a series of stories that capture the interactions between Costa Ricans and the algorithms of social media platforms. To analyze these relationships, we develop a "ventriloquist" ethnog…
How Migrants Experience Information Uncertainty and Vulnerability: Lessons for (Dis)information Studies
This article develops a phenomenological approach to examine the intersection of global migration and rising concerns about disinformation. Drawing on interviews with Venezuelans en route to the United States-Mexico border through Central America, the article analyzes how undocumented migrants live amid information precarity, how they relate to disinformation, and how disinformation affects their decisions. We demonstrate the centrality of inform…
Beyond the tropicalization of concepts: Theorizing digital realities with and from the Global South (introduction to a special issue)
In this introductory section of the special issue titled “Beyond the Tropicalization of Concepts: Theorizing Digital Realities With and From the Global South,” the editors present a critical examination of the unquestioned adoption of theoretical frameworks from dominant regions of power and knowledge in the context of the Global South. This process, referred to as the “tropicalization of concepts,” is scrutinized for its consequences, which incl…
Pandemic populism and permanent campaigning: How Central American presidents build political legitimacy on Facebook
This article examines how Carlos Alvarado and Nayib Bukele, presidents of Costa Rica and El Salvador, respectively, employed Facebook throughout 2020 to communicate about the COVID-19 pandemic. The study draws on content analysis of 1584 posts made by both presidents on Facebook throughout 2020. The article argues that Alvarado and Bukele turned the pandemic into a means to build political legitimacy in their specific political context through tw…
Living with Algorithms: Agency and User Culture in Costa Rica
Romance en La Era Del Streaming: Estrategias de oferta y consumo de contenidos en Netflix
Este artículo examina cómo un grupo de mujeres en Costa Rica se apropia de contenidos románticos en Netflix. Se busca entender cómo se resuelven en la práctica las ambigüedades y tensiones propias al consumo de contenido romántico en medios de comunicación y sus particularidades en el seno de culturas algorítmicas. Aunque la relación entre medios de comunicación y contenido romántico ha ocupado al pensamiento feminista por décadas, pocas investig…
Toward a popular theory of algorithms
This paper establishes dialogs between theories on the popular and critical studies on algorithms and datafication. In doing so, it contributes to reversing the analytical tendency to assume that algorithms have universal effects and that conclusions about “algorithmic power” in the Global North apply unproblematically everywhere else. We begin by clarifying how Latin American scholars and other research traditions have theorized the popular (“lo…
Playing Spotify's game: Artists' approaches to playlisting in Latin America
This paper examines recent transformations in music industries associated with platformization by privileging the perspectives, experiences, and voices of artists. We draw on in-depth interviews with 41 musicians based in two Latin American countries: Costa Rica and Mexico. We analyze how artists perceive the “power” and limitations of playlists, how they think playlists are transforming music industries, and how they associate various forms of p…
The Mechanisms of “Incidental News Consumption”: An Eye Tracking Study of News Interaction on Facebook
This exploratory study examines how participants incidentally consumed news on social media through an eye tracking analysis of their visual interaction with posts on Facebook. By interaction, we refer to the attention participants gave to news (measured through the time devoted to looking at the content); how they read these news items (measured through ocular movements on the screen); and the way they engaged with this content (measured through…
Populism, Religion, and Social Media in Central America
This paper analyzes how presidential candidates Fabricio Alvarado and Nayib Bukele used Facebook during the elections in Costa Rica (2018) and El Salvador (2019) respectively to develop a particular style of communication that blended populist elements and religious discourse. This style of communication extended traditional modes of populism that have prevailed in Latin America since the turn of the century (emphasizing the notion of the hero wh…
Individual Evaluation vs Fact-checking in the Recognition and Willingness to Share Fake News About Covid-19 via Whatsapp
The aim of the study is to research the effects of individual evaluation of fake and truthful news about COVID-19, compared to the exposure to fact-checking on the intention to share them via WhatsApp. An online experiment was conducted with a convenience sample of 819 Costa Ricans. Results show that people in the individual evaluation condition assess completely fake news with greater veracity and completely truthful information with less veraci…
Uncertain Knowledge. Studying “Truth” and “Conspiracies” in the Digital Age: Introduction
It is nowadays commonplace to find statements about how the web has increased the circulation and reach of “conspiracy theories”. In France, the attack on the Capitol by .QAnon activists in January 2021, and before that the attacks of 2015, or the surveys commissioned by the Jean Jaurès Foundation, have fueled many alarming discourses about the spread of “fake news” on the internet. The pandemic context in which we have been living since March 20…
Folk theories of algorithmic recommendations on Spotify: Enacting data assemblages in the global South
This paper examines folk theories of algorithmic recommendations on Spotify in order to make visible the cultural specificities of data assemblages in the global South. The study was conducted in Costa Rica and draws on triangulated data from 30 interviews, 4 focus groups with 22 users, and the study of "rich pictures" made by individuals to graphically represent their understanding of algorithmic recommendations. We found two main folk theories:…
Making sense of the newspaper crisis: A critical assessment of existing research and an agenda for future work
This article analyzes recent research on the newspaper crisis. It discusses how authors have examined the sources, manifestations, and implications of this crisis, and the proposals to resolve it. In addition, the essay critically examines this body of work by assessing the main spatial and temporal contexts that researchers have studied, the theories and methods that authors employ, and the analytical tropes they have deployed to make sense of t…
At the Intersection of Content and Materiality: A Texto-Material Perspective on the Use of Media Technologies
This article examines the scholarship on agency in the appropriation of information and communication technologies in communication and media research and science and technology studies. Work in these fields has been limited by inability to depict the ways in which materiality and content intersect in technology use and why that matters for making sense of agency dynamics. This article articulates a “texto-material” perspective that combines anal…
From online filter to web format: Articulating materiality and meaning in the early history of blogs
This paper investigates the transformation of blogs from online ‘filters’ into a ‘format’ for sharing a variety of content on the Web. To account for this process of partial stabilization, this study draws on a mixed-methods research design and on an interdisciplinary framework that combines scholarship in science and technology studies (STS) and communication studies. The article analyzes how different communities of users emerged, and how they …
Toward a popular theory of algorithms
This paper establishes dialogs between theories on the popular and critical studies on algorithms and datafication. In doing so, it contributes to reversing the analytical tendency to assume that algorithms have universal effects and that conclusions about “algorithmic power” in the Global North apply unproblematically everywhere else. We begin by clarifying how Latin American scholars and other research traditions have theorized the popular (“lo…
Web Technologies of the Self: The Arising of the “Blogger” Identity
Drawing on Michel Foucault's theories of subjectivity, this paper conceptualizes early blogging and online diary writing as “technologies of the self,” that is, procedures through which practitioners enacted certain identities as Internet users. This study combines archival research, close analysis of websites, and interviews with their creators. It analyzes how the most defining practices associated with the emergence of these websites in the se…
Populism, Religion, and Social Media in Central America
This paper analyzes how presidential candidates Fabricio Alvarado and Nayib Bukele used Facebook during the elections in Costa Rica (2018) and El Salvador (2019) respectively to develop a particular style of communication that blended populist elements and religious discourse. This style of communication extended traditional modes of populism that have prevailed in Latin America since the turn of the century (emphasizing the notion of the hero wh…
Genres as Social Affect: Cultivating Moods and Emotions through Playlists on Spotify
This article bridges work on media technologies and affect theories through an analysis of how users appropriate playlists on Spotify. Our study draws on 30 interviews with users of music streaming services in Costa Rica and an analysis of their accounts on these platforms. We discuss how users create playlists as a means to cultivate affect. The notion of cultivation stresses the dynamic and ritual work involved in producing, capturing, and expl…
Beyond the tropicalization of concepts: Theorizing digital realities with and from the Global South (introduction to a special issue)
In this introductory section of the special issue titled “Beyond the Tropicalization of Concepts: Theorizing Digital Realities With and From the Global South,” the editors present a critical examination of the unquestioned adoption of theoretical frameworks from dominant regions of power and knowledge in the context of the Global South. This process, referred to as the “tropicalization of concepts,” is scrutinized for its consequences, which incl…
Playing Spotify's game: Artists' approaches to playlisting in Latin America
This paper examines recent transformations in music industries associated with platformization by privileging the perspectives, experiences, and voices of artists. We draw on in-depth interviews with 41 musicians based in two Latin American countries: Costa Rica and Mexico. We analyze how artists perceive the “power” and limitations of playlists, how they think playlists are transforming music industries, and how they associate various forms of p…
The rise of blogging: Articulation as a dynamic of technological stabilization
This article conceptualizes the emergence and stabilization of blogging as a process of articulation; that is, the establishment of a non-necessary link between a group of internet users, websites, metaphors, and practices of content creation. Data for this study come from a mixed-methods research design. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework that combines constructionist sociology of technology, communication and media research, and cultural…
The Mutual Domestication of Users and Algorithmic Recommendations on Netflix
This article examines the mutual domestication of users and recommendation algorithms on Netflix. Based on 25 interviews with users and an inductive analysis of their practices and profiles on the platform, we discuss five dynamics through which this mutual domestication occurs: personalization, or the ways in which individualized relationships between users and the platform are built; how algorithmic recommendations are integrated into a matrix …
Uncertain Knowledge. Studying “Truth” and “Conspiracies” in the Digital Age: Introduction
It is nowadays commonplace to find statements about how the web has increased the circulation and reach of “conspiracy theories”. In France, the attack on the Capitol by .QAnon activists in January 2021, and before that the attacks of 2015, or the surveys commissioned by the Jean Jaurès Foundation, have fueled many alarming discourses about the spread of “fake news” on the internet. The pandemic context in which we have been living since March 20…
From Feed to Flow: Watching Television on TikTok
This paper investigates how users engage with content on TikTok that was originally produced for television. Based on interviews with participants in Costa Rica, we argue that watching television content on TikTok provides valuable insights into the future trajectories of both television and new media. To this end, we first demonstrate that TikTok’s television flow (in Raymond Williams’ sense) is “co-programed” through user interaction with algor…
Algorithmic governmentality in Latin America: Sociotechnical imaginaries, neocolonial soft power, and authoritarianism
Latin America stands as one of the most unequal regions globally, where economic and social crises persist regardless of the ideological leanings of the ruling governments. Many countries in the region grapple with pervasive issues such as corruption, impunity, and a lack of adherence to the rule of law. In this context of generalized crisis, governments have turned to discourses of innovation and technological progress to justify their actions, …
Algorithms as facts and fabrications: Ethnographic stories of factishes from the Costa Rican Caribbean
How do algorithms shape the experience of facts? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Limón, Costa Rica, this paper explores the role of algorithms in mediating three kinds of “factishes”: data truths, affective facts, and mystic revelations. The article unfolds as a series of stories that capture the interactions between Costa Ricans and the algorithms of social media platforms. To analyze these relationships, we develop a "ventriloquist" ethnog…
Facebook as “third space”: Triggers of political talk in news about nonpublic affairs
This paper builds on recent work on “third spaces” to analyze political talk in comments on news about nonpublic affairs. It draws on content and discourse analyses of comments on news published by a leading Costa Rican media organization on Facebook. The article develops five categories of issues that triggered political talk (institutionality, identity, political inclinations, factual aspects, and criticism of the media) and examines the discur…
The Internet as a transnational project: Connecting Central America through computer networks (1990–1996)
This article argues that transnational flows of knowledge, data, and technologies are not only an actual feature of the Internet, but rather a constitutive characteristic of its historical development. To make this case, it discusses how six countries in Central America-Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama-connected to and through computer networks and technologies such as UUCP, BITNET, and the Internet in the first…
Tropicalizing platformization? Tensions in research on algorithms and platforms in Latin America
This short article critically examines the growing body of research on algorithms and platforms in Latin America. Drawing on an analysis of articles published in Portuguese or Spanish in journals of the region, we discuss the main analytical approaches that shape Latin American platformization research. We reveal a tension between two dominant analytical orientations. On one hand, there is a tendency to directly apply concepts and theories from t…
How Migrants Experience Information Uncertainty and Vulnerability: Lessons for (Dis)information Studies
This article develops a phenomenological approach to examine the intersection of global migration and rising concerns about disinformation. Drawing on interviews with Venezuelans en route to the United States-Mexico border through Central America, the article analyzes how undocumented migrants live amid information precarity, how they relate to disinformation, and how disinformation affects their decisions. We demonstrate the centrality of inform…
Pandemic populism and permanent campaigning: How Central American presidents build political legitimacy on Facebook
This article examines how Carlos Alvarado and Nayib Bukele, presidents of Costa Rica and El Salvador, respectively, employed Facebook throughout 2020 to communicate about the COVID-19 pandemic. The study draws on content analysis of 1584 posts made by both presidents on Facebook throughout 2020. The article argues that Alvarado and Bukele turned the pandemic into a means to build political legitimacy in their specific political context through tw…
Individual Evaluation vs Fact-checking in the Recognition and Willingness to Share Fake News About Covid-19 via Whatsapp
The aim of the study is to research the effects of individual evaluation of fake and truthful news about COVID-19, compared to the exposure to fact-checking on the intention to share them via WhatsApp. An online experiment was conducted with a convenience sample of 819 Costa Ricans. Results show that people in the individual evaluation condition assess completely fake news with greater veracity and completely truthful information with less veraci…
Savoirs incertains: Étudier « complots » et « vérités » à l’ère numérique
C’est aujourd’hui devenu un lieu commun que d’affirmer que le web a démultiplié la circulation et l’écho reçu par les théories du complot. En France, l’attaque des activistes de QAnon sur le Capitole en janvier 2021, et avant cela les attentats de 2015, ou encore la série d’enquêtes commanditées par la Fondation Jean Jaurès sur la thématique du conspirationnisme, ont constitué des points de fixation pour de nombreux discours alarmistes sur la pro…
The rise of blogging: Articulation as a dynamic of technological stabilization
This article conceptualizes the emergence and stabilization of blogging as a process of articulation; that is, the establishment of a non-necessary link between a group of internet users, websites, metaphors, and practices of content creation. Data for this study come from a mixed-methods research design. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework that combines constructionist sociology of technology, communication and media research, and cultural…
From online filter to web format: Articulating materiality and meaning in the early history of blogs
This paper investigates the transformation of blogs from online ‘filters’ into a ‘format’ for sharing a variety of content on the Web. To account for this process of partial stabilization, this study draws on a mixed-methods research design and on an interdisciplinary framework that combines scholarship in science and technology studies (STS) and communication studies. The article analyzes how different communities of users emerged, and how they …
Making sense of the newspaper crisis: A critical assessment of existing research and an agenda for future work
This article analyzes recent research on the newspaper crisis. It discusses how authors have examined the sources, manifestations, and implications of this crisis, and the proposals to resolve it. In addition, the essay critically examines this body of work by assessing the main spatial and temporal contexts that researchers have studied, the theories and methods that authors employ, and the analytical tropes they have deployed to make sense of t…
Web Technologies of the Self: The Arising of the “Blogger” Identity
Drawing on Michel Foucault's theories of subjectivity, this paper conceptualizes early blogging and online diary writing as “technologies of the self,” that is, procedures through which practitioners enacted certain identities as Internet users. This study combines archival research, close analysis of websites, and interviews with their creators. It analyzes how the most defining practices associated with the emergence of these websites in the se…
At the Intersection of Content and Materiality: A Texto-Material Perspective on the Use of Media Technologies
This article examines the scholarship on agency in the appropriation of information and communication technologies in communication and media research and science and technology studies. Work in these fields has been limited by inability to depict the ways in which materiality and content intersect in technology use and why that matters for making sense of agency dynamics. This article articulates a “texto-material” perspective that combines anal…
Establishing the Internet in Costa Rica: Co-optation and the Closure of Technological Controversies
Research in science and technology studies has devoted significant attention to technological controversies and the mechanisms that actors employ to resolve them. This article contributes to this literature by developing the notion of co-optation as a dynamic of closure. Co-optation is conceptualized as the incorporation of an actor or group into the organizational structure of another group in order to avert threat or adapt to a context of chang…
Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society
Scholars from communication and media studies join those from science and technology studies to examine media technologies as complex, sociomaterial phenomena. In recent years, scholarship around media technologies has finally shed the assumption that these technologies are separate from and powerfully determining of social life, looking at them instead as produced by and embedded in distinct social, cultural, and political practices. Communicati…
Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society
Steps toward cosmopolitanism in the study of media technologies
Most scholarship on media technologies can be organized along two main dimensions of inquiry: the production or consumption of these technologies, and their content or material dimensions. This map of the field of inquiry would produce four specific research areas: the production of content, the consumption of content, the production of materiality, and the consumption of materiality. Despite their respective contributions, these silos have also …
A la conquista del mundo en línea: Internet como objeto de estudio (1990–2007)
Este artículo explora el desarrollo de la investigación sobre internet (principalmente anglófona) entre 1990 y 2007. Para esto, se analizan los principales ejes temáticos de los estudios sobre tal medio a lo largo de casi dos décadas, y se presentan diversos debates que han definido su evolución como objeto de estudio. Se sugiere, a final de cuentas, que los estudios sobre internet constituyen un campo de conocimientos en proceso de construcción,…
Science, Technology, and Society Studies
This entry examines contemporary scholarship on media and information technologies at the intersection of science and technology studies (STS) and communication studies. The term “media and information technologies” is used to bring together a variety of research frameworks that seek to capture symbolic, social, cultural, or political aspects of technology. This body of work emphasizes broad historical scope, infrastructural dimensions, and the d…
El “Silicon Valley latinoamericano”: La producción de tecnología de comunicación en Costa Rica (1950-2016)
Este artículo analiza el crecimiento de un campo institucional de desarrollo de tecnología de comunicación en Costa Rica desde 1950 hasta la actualidad. El estudio hace dos contribuciones: empíricamente, sitúa la producción contemporánea de tecnología de comunicación en Costa Rica en perspectiva histórica; y, a nivel metodológico, suplementa fuentes primarias de datos con entrevistas en profundidad. Se discuten tres procesos: (1) el surgimiento d…
Years of the Internet in Central America: An interview with Guy de Téramond
January 2018 marks the 25th anniversary of the first dedicated Internet connection in Central America. Little is known about the conditions that characterised the early development of the Internet in this part of the globe. In this interview, made on 23 June 2017, Guy de Téramond, more commonly known as “The Father of the Internet in Central America”, recalls some of the main events that led the connection to BITNET and the Internet in this regio…
The Internet as a transnational project: Connecting Central America through computer networks (1990–1996)
This article argues that transnational flows of knowledge, data, and technologies are not only an actual feature of the Internet, but rather a constitutive characteristic of its historical development. To make this case, it discusses how six countries in Central America-Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama-connected to and through computer networks and technologies such as UUCP, BITNET, and the Internet in the first…
The Mutual Domestication of Users and Algorithmic Recommendations on Netflix
This article examines the mutual domestication of users and recommendation algorithms on Netflix. Based on 25 interviews with users and an inductive analysis of their practices and profiles on the platform, we discuss five dynamics through which this mutual domestication occurs: personalization, or the ways in which individualized relationships between users and the platform are built; how algorithmic recommendations are integrated into a matrix …
Genres as Social Affect: Cultivating Moods and Emotions through Playlists on Spotify
This article bridges work on media technologies and affect theories through an analysis of how users appropriate playlists on Spotify. Our study draws on 30 interviews with users of music streaming services in Costa Rica and an analysis of their accounts on these platforms. We discuss how users create playlists as a means to cultivate affect. The notion of cultivation stresses the dynamic and ritual work involved in producing, capturing, and expl…
A Transnational History of the Internet in Central America, 1985–2000: Networks, Integration, and Development
Not Natural, Nor Neutral: The Cultural Configurations of Social Media Affordances Within Chilean Influencer Industry
This paper explores the configurations of social media’s affordances within the Chilean influencer industry. Chile has a growing number of professional social media influencers who blur global norms and local markets, working with both local brands and international campaigns. We argue for situating affordances within a wider context in which the features of platforms acquire particular meanings. Our analysis focuses on two dynamics. On the one h…
Facebook as “third space”: Triggers of political talk in news about nonpublic affairs
This paper builds on recent work on “third spaces” to analyze political talk in comments on news about nonpublic affairs. It draws on content and discourse analyses of comments on news published by a leading Costa Rican media organization on Facebook. The article develops five categories of issues that triggered political talk (institutionality, identity, political inclinations, factual aspects, and criticism of the media) and examines the discur…
Folk theories of algorithmic recommendations on Spotify: Enacting data assemblages in the global South
This paper examines folk theories of algorithmic recommendations on Spotify in order to make visible the cultural specificities of data assemblages in the global South. The study was conducted in Costa Rica and draws on triangulated data from 30 interviews, 4 focus groups with 22 users, and the study of "rich pictures" made by individuals to graphically represent their understanding of algorithmic recommendations. We found two main folk theories:…
The Mechanisms of “Incidental News Consumption”: An Eye Tracking Study of News Interaction on Facebook
This exploratory study examines how participants incidentally consumed news on social media through an eye tracking analysis of their visual interaction with posts on Facebook. By interaction, we refer to the attention participants gave to news (measured through the time devoted to looking at the content); how they read these news items (measured through ocular movements on the screen); and the way they engaged with this content (measured through…
Populism, Religion, and Social Media in Central America
This paper analyzes how presidential candidates Fabricio Alvarado and Nayib Bukele used Facebook during the elections in Costa Rica (2018) and El Salvador (2019) respectively to develop a particular style of communication that blended populist elements and religious discourse. This style of communication extended traditional modes of populism that have prevailed in Latin America since the turn of the century (emphasizing the notion of the hero wh…
Individual Evaluation vs Fact-checking in the Recognition and Willingness to Share Fake News About Covid-19 via Whatsapp
The aim of the study is to research the effects of individual evaluation of fake and truthful news about COVID-19, compared to the exposure to fact-checking on the intention to share them via WhatsApp. An online experiment was conducted with a convenience sample of 819 Costa Ricans. Results show that people in the individual evaluation condition assess completely fake news with greater veracity and completely truthful information with less veraci…
Uncertain Knowledge. Studying “Truth” and “Conspiracies” in the Digital Age: Introduction
It is nowadays commonplace to find statements about how the web has increased the circulation and reach of “conspiracy theories”. In France, the attack on the Capitol by .QAnon activists in January 2021, and before that the attacks of 2015, or the surveys commissioned by the Jean Jaurès Foundation, have fueled many alarming discourses about the spread of “fake news” on the internet. The pandemic context in which we have been living since March 20…
Savoirs incertains: Étudier « complots » et « vérités » à l’ère numérique
C’est aujourd’hui devenu un lieu commun que d’affirmer que le web a démultiplié la circulation et l’écho reçu par les théories du complot. En France, l’attaque des activistes de QAnon sur le Capitole en janvier 2021, et avant cela les attentats de 2015, ou encore la série d’enquêtes commanditées par la Fondation Jean Jaurès sur la thématique du conspirationnisme, ont constitué des points de fixation pour de nombreux discours alarmistes sur la pro…
Computer Science (30 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Political science (25 works) · Social Media and Politics (15 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Law (12 works) · World Wide Web (12 works) · Social science (11 works) · Art (10 works) · Media studies (10 works)