Jenna Burrell
Biographic Data
| ID | 3650438 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jenna Burrell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jenna |
| FAMILY NAME | Burrell |
| SIGNATURE | BURRELL J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 673 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Automated decision-making as domination
Machine learning ethics research is demonstrably skewed. Work that defines fairness as a matter of distribution or allocation and that proposes computationally tractable definitions of fairness has been overproduced and overpublished. This paper takes a sociological approach to explain how subtle processes of social-reproduction within the field of computer science partially explains this outcome. Arguing that allocative fairness is inherently li…
Introduction for the special issue of “Ideologies of AI and the consolidation of power”: Naming power
This introductory essay for the special issue of First Monday, “Ideologies of AI and the consolidation of power,” considers how power operates in AI and machine learning research and publication. Drawing on themes from the seven contributions to this special issue, we argue that what can and cannot be said inside of mainstream computer science publications appears to be constrained by the power, wealth, and ideology of a small cohort of industria…
The Society of Algorithms
The pairing of massive data sets with processes-or algorithms-written in computer code to sort through, organize, extract, or mine them has made inroads in almost every major social institution. This article proposes a reading of the scholarly literature concerned with the social implications of this transformation. First, we discuss the rise of a new occupational class, which we call the coding elite. This group has consolidated power through th…
On Half-Built Assemblages: Waiting for a Data Center in Prineville, Oregon
In 2010 the mega-corporation Facebook finalized an agreement to build a massive data center in Prineville, a small town in central Oregon previously known for logging, cattle ranching, and as the headquarters of the Les Schwab tire company. This was a largely unanticipated event that local leaders nonetheless prepared for several decades before when they designated a rural economic zone on the outskirts of town. However, the enterprise zone sat m…
Friction, snake oil, and weird countries: Cybersecurity systems could deepen global inequality through regional blocking
In this moment of rising nationalism worldwide, governments, civil society groups, transnational companies, and web users all complain of increasing regional fragmentation online. While prior work in this area has primarily focused on issues of government censorship and regulatory compliance, we use an inductive and qualitative approach to examine targeted blocking by corporate entities of entire regions motivated by concerns about fraud, abuse, …
Thinking relationally about digital inequality in rural regions of the U.S
This article reconsiders the concept of digital inequality drawing from recent developments in science and technology studies, including evolving theories of materiality (Barad, 2003; Bennett, 2010; Ingold, 2012), work on critical media infrastructures (Parks and Starosielski, 2015), and on maintenance and repair (Jackson, 2014; Edgerton, 2007). New ways of thinking about the material world move away from an examination of the cultural significan…
How the machine 'thinks: Understanding opacity in machine learning algorithms
This article considers the issue of opacity as a problem for socially consequential mechanisms of classification and ranking, such as spam filters, credit card fraud detection, search engines, news trends, market segmentation and advertising, insurance or loan qualification, and credit scoring. These mechanisms of classification all frequently rely on computational algorithms, and in many cases on machine learning algorithms to do this work. In t…
On the importance and implications of studying technology non-use
column Share on On the importance and implications of studying technology non-use Authors: Eric P. S. Baumer Cornell University Cornell UniversityView Profile , Jenna Burrell University of California, Berkeley University of California, BerkeleyView Profile , Morgan G. Ames University of California, Irvine University of California, IrvineView Profile , Jed R. Brubaker University of California, Irvine University of California, IrvineView Profile , …
Why study technology non-use
This special issue provides an opportunity to rethink how we approach, study, and conceptualize human relationships with, and through, technology. The authors in this collection take a multiplicity of approaches on diverse topics to develop a rigorous theoretical understanding for non-use, setting crucial groundwork for future research
The myth of market price information: Mobile phones and the application of economic knowledge in ICTD
The notion that farmers use mobile phones to acquire market price information has become a kind of shorthand for the potential of this technology to empower rural, low-income populations in the Global South. We argue that the envisioned consequences of ‘market price information’ for market efficiency with benefits at all income levels is a kind of myth, one frequently promulgated in the publications of aid agencies like the World Bank, in the pro…
Modernity in material form? Mobile phones in the careers of Ghanaian market women
Recent research on mobile phones in market exchange activities in the Global South has tended to dematerialise the phone, narrowing its application to accord with disciplinary concerns rather than to its full range of material possibilities. This article seeks to expand the model of the mobile phone in socio-economic development by examining its uptake and adaptation among Ghanaian market women. The analysis considers development in terms of mark…
Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Games
Invisible Users: Youth in the Internet Cafés of Urban Ghana
An account of how young people in Ghana's capital city adopt and adapt digital technology in the margins of the global economy. The urban youth frequenting the Internet cafés of Accra, Ghana, who are decidedly not members of their country's elite, use the Internet largely as a way to orchestrate encounters across distance and amass foreign ties—activities once limited to the wealthy, university-educated classes. The Internet, accessed on second-h…
Technology hype versus enduring uses: A longitudinal study of Internet use among early adopters in an African city
This paper considers a set of early adopters of the Internet first encountered by the author in the Internet cafés of Accra, Ghana. The analysis draws from long–term ethnographic research and paired interviews with key informants separated by a six–year interval to identify and explain different trajectories of changing use of the Internet over time. Changes in use followed one of three general patterns: (1) intensification, (2) reorientation, or…
User Agency in the Middle Range: Rumors and the Reinvention of the Internet in Accra, Ghana
This article is an analysis of rumors about Internet scamming told by Internet café users in the West African capital city of Accra, Ghana. Rumors provided accounts of how the Internet can be effectively operated by young Ghanaians to realize ''big gains'' through foreign connections. Yet these accounts were contradicted by the less promising direct experiences users had at the computer interface. Rumors amplified evidence of wildly successful as…
Evaluating Shared Access: Social equality and the circulation of mobile phones in rural Uganda
This article examines forms of shared access to technology where some privileges of ownership are retained. Sharing is defined as informal, non-remunerative resource distributing activities where multiple individuals have a relationship to a single device as purchaser, owner, possessor, operator and/or user. In the specific case of mobile phones in rural Uganda, dynamics of social policing and social obligation were mediated and concretized by th…
The Field Site as a Network: A Strategy for Locating Ethnographic Research
Through the work of constructing a field site, researchers define the objects and subjects of their research. This article explores a variety of strategies devised by researchers to map social research onto spatial terrain. Virtual networked field sites are among the recent approaches that are challenging conventional thinking about field-based research. The benefits and consequences of one particular configuration, the field site as a network th…
Problematic Empowerment: West African Internet Scams as Strategic Misrepresentation
Internet scamming strategies associated with West Africa typically involve the creation and deployment of actional narratives depicting political turmoil, cor-ruption, violence, poverty, and personal tragedy set in a variety of African na-tions. This article examines Internet scammers ’ complicity in promoting these creatively dramatic, yet stereotyped, representations of Africa and Africans. Their approach exempliaes what de Certeau describes as…
I have great desires to look beyond my world: Trajectories of information and communication technology use among Ghanaians living abroad
Using an ethnographic approach, this study sought to understand how the personal aspirations and social landscapes of Ghanaians living in London shaped their use of a constellation of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as camcorders, digital cameras, the internet and mobile phones. Two trajectories of ICT use were discovered among the individuals interviewed. One trajectory fit with the expected transnational practices of …
How the machine 'thinks: Understanding opacity in machine learning algorithms
This article considers the issue of opacity as a problem for socially consequential mechanisms of classification and ranking, such as spam filters, credit card fraud detection, search engines, news trends, market segmentation and advertising, insurance or loan qualification, and credit scoring. These mechanisms of classification all frequently rely on computational algorithms, and in many cases on machine learning algorithms to do this work. In t…
The Society of Algorithms
The pairing of massive data sets with processes-or algorithms-written in computer code to sort through, organize, extract, or mine them has made inroads in almost every major social institution. This article proposes a reading of the scholarly literature concerned with the social implications of this transformation. First, we discuss the rise of a new occupational class, which we call the coding elite. This group has consolidated power through th…
The Field Site as a Network: A Strategy for Locating Ethnographic Research
Through the work of constructing a field site, researchers define the objects and subjects of their research. This article explores a variety of strategies devised by researchers to map social research onto spatial terrain. Virtual networked field sites are among the recent approaches that are challenging conventional thinking about field-based research. The benefits and consequences of one particular configuration, the field site as a network th…
I have great desires to look beyond my world: Trajectories of information and communication technology use among Ghanaians living abroad
Using an ethnographic approach, this study sought to understand how the personal aspirations and social landscapes of Ghanaians living in London shaped their use of a constellation of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as camcorders, digital cameras, the internet and mobile phones. Two trajectories of ICT use were discovered among the individuals interviewed. One trajectory fit with the expected transnational practices of …
On Half-Built Assemblages: Waiting for a Data Center in Prineville, Oregon
In 2010 the mega-corporation Facebook finalized an agreement to build a massive data center in Prineville, a small town in central Oregon previously known for logging, cattle ranching, and as the headquarters of the Les Schwab tire company. This was a largely unanticipated event that local leaders nonetheless prepared for several decades before when they designated a rural economic zone on the outskirts of town. However, the enterprise zone sat m…
Evaluating Shared Access: Social equality and the circulation of mobile phones in rural Uganda
This article examines forms of shared access to technology where some privileges of ownership are retained. Sharing is defined as informal, non-remunerative resource distributing activities where multiple individuals have a relationship to a single device as purchaser, owner, possessor, operator and/or user. In the specific case of mobile phones in rural Uganda, dynamics of social policing and social obligation were mediated and concretized by th…
The myth of market price information: Mobile phones and the application of economic knowledge in ICTD
The notion that farmers use mobile phones to acquire market price information has become a kind of shorthand for the potential of this technology to empower rural, low-income populations in the Global South. We argue that the envisioned consequences of ‘market price information’ for market efficiency with benefits at all income levels is a kind of myth, one frequently promulgated in the publications of aid agencies like the World Bank, in the pro…
Modernity in material form? Mobile phones in the careers of Ghanaian market women
Recent research on mobile phones in market exchange activities in the Global South has tended to dematerialise the phone, narrowing its application to accord with disciplinary concerns rather than to its full range of material possibilities. This article seeks to expand the model of the mobile phone in socio-economic development by examining its uptake and adaptation among Ghanaian market women. The analysis considers development in terms of mark…
User Agency in the Middle Range: Rumors and the Reinvention of the Internet in Accra, Ghana
This article is an analysis of rumors about Internet scamming told by Internet café users in the West African capital city of Accra, Ghana. Rumors provided accounts of how the Internet can be effectively operated by young Ghanaians to realize ''big gains'' through foreign connections. Yet these accounts were contradicted by the less promising direct experiences users had at the computer interface. Rumors amplified evidence of wildly successful as…
Friction, snake oil, and weird countries: Cybersecurity systems could deepen global inequality through regional blocking
In this moment of rising nationalism worldwide, governments, civil society groups, transnational companies, and web users all complain of increasing regional fragmentation online. While prior work in this area has primarily focused on issues of government censorship and regulatory compliance, we use an inductive and qualitative approach to examine targeted blocking by corporate entities of entire regions motivated by concerns about fraud, abuse, …
Problematic Empowerment: West African Internet Scams as Strategic Misrepresentation
Internet scamming strategies associated with West Africa typically involve the creation and deployment of actional narratives depicting political turmoil, cor-ruption, violence, poverty, and personal tragedy set in a variety of African na-tions. This article examines Internet scammers ’ complicity in promoting these creatively dramatic, yet stereotyped, representations of Africa and Africans. Their approach exempliaes what de Certeau describes as…
I have great desires to look beyond my world: Trajectories of information and communication technology use among Ghanaians living abroad
Using an ethnographic approach, this study sought to understand how the personal aspirations and social landscapes of Ghanaians living in London shaped their use of a constellation of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) such as camcorders, digital cameras, the internet and mobile phones. Two trajectories of ICT use were discovered among the individuals interviewed. One trajectory fit with the expected transnational practices of …
The Field Site as a Network: A Strategy for Locating Ethnographic Research
Through the work of constructing a field site, researchers define the objects and subjects of their research. This article explores a variety of strategies devised by researchers to map social research onto spatial terrain. Virtual networked field sites are among the recent approaches that are challenging conventional thinking about field-based research. The benefits and consequences of one particular configuration, the field site as a network th…
Evaluating Shared Access: Social equality and the circulation of mobile phones in rural Uganda
This article examines forms of shared access to technology where some privileges of ownership are retained. Sharing is defined as informal, non-remunerative resource distributing activities where multiple individuals have a relationship to a single device as purchaser, owner, possessor, operator and/or user. In the specific case of mobile phones in rural Uganda, dynamics of social policing and social obligation were mediated and concretized by th…
User Agency in the Middle Range: Rumors and the Reinvention of the Internet in Accra, Ghana
This article is an analysis of rumors about Internet scamming told by Internet café users in the West African capital city of Accra, Ghana. Rumors provided accounts of how the Internet can be effectively operated by young Ghanaians to realize ''big gains'' through foreign connections. Yet these accounts were contradicted by the less promising direct experiences users had at the computer interface. Rumors amplified evidence of wildly successful as…
Invisible Users: Youth in the Internet Cafés of Urban Ghana
An account of how young people in Ghana's capital city adopt and adapt digital technology in the margins of the global economy. The urban youth frequenting the Internet cafés of Accra, Ghana, who are decidedly not members of their country's elite, use the Internet largely as a way to orchestrate encounters across distance and amass foreign ties—activities once limited to the wealthy, university-educated classes. The Internet, accessed on second-h…
Technology hype versus enduring uses: A longitudinal study of Internet use among early adopters in an African city
This paper considers a set of early adopters of the Internet first encountered by the author in the Internet cafés of Accra, Ghana. The analysis draws from long–term ethnographic research and paired interviews with key informants separated by a six–year interval to identify and explain different trajectories of changing use of the Internet over time. Changes in use followed one of three general patterns: (1) intensification, (2) reorientation, or…
Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Games
Modernity in material form? Mobile phones in the careers of Ghanaian market women
Recent research on mobile phones in market exchange activities in the Global South has tended to dematerialise the phone, narrowing its application to accord with disciplinary concerns rather than to its full range of material possibilities. This article seeks to expand the model of the mobile phone in socio-economic development by examining its uptake and adaptation among Ghanaian market women. The analysis considers development in terms of mark…
On the importance and implications of studying technology non-use
column Share on On the importance and implications of studying technology non-use Authors: Eric P. S. Baumer Cornell University Cornell UniversityView Profile , Jenna Burrell University of California, Berkeley University of California, BerkeleyView Profile , Morgan G. Ames University of California, Irvine University of California, IrvineView Profile , Jed R. Brubaker University of California, Irvine University of California, IrvineView Profile , …
Why study technology non-use
This special issue provides an opportunity to rethink how we approach, study, and conceptualize human relationships with, and through, technology. The authors in this collection take a multiplicity of approaches on diverse topics to develop a rigorous theoretical understanding for non-use, setting crucial groundwork for future research
The myth of market price information: Mobile phones and the application of economic knowledge in ICTD
The notion that farmers use mobile phones to acquire market price information has become a kind of shorthand for the potential of this technology to empower rural, low-income populations in the Global South. We argue that the envisioned consequences of ‘market price information’ for market efficiency with benefits at all income levels is a kind of myth, one frequently promulgated in the publications of aid agencies like the World Bank, in the pro…
How the machine 'thinks: Understanding opacity in machine learning algorithms
This article considers the issue of opacity as a problem for socially consequential mechanisms of classification and ranking, such as spam filters, credit card fraud detection, search engines, news trends, market segmentation and advertising, insurance or loan qualification, and credit scoring. These mechanisms of classification all frequently rely on computational algorithms, and in many cases on machine learning algorithms to do this work. In t…
Thinking relationally about digital inequality in rural regions of the U.S
This article reconsiders the concept of digital inequality drawing from recent developments in science and technology studies, including evolving theories of materiality (Barad, 2003; Bennett, 2010; Ingold, 2012), work on critical media infrastructures (Parks and Starosielski, 2015), and on maintenance and repair (Jackson, 2014; Edgerton, 2007). New ways of thinking about the material world move away from an examination of the cultural significan…
Friction, snake oil, and weird countries: Cybersecurity systems could deepen global inequality through regional blocking
In this moment of rising nationalism worldwide, governments, civil society groups, transnational companies, and web users all complain of increasing regional fragmentation online. While prior work in this area has primarily focused on issues of government censorship and regulatory compliance, we use an inductive and qualitative approach to examine targeted blocking by corporate entities of entire regions motivated by concerns about fraud, abuse, …
On Half-Built Assemblages: Waiting for a Data Center in Prineville, Oregon
In 2010 the mega-corporation Facebook finalized an agreement to build a massive data center in Prineville, a small town in central Oregon previously known for logging, cattle ranching, and as the headquarters of the Les Schwab tire company. This was a largely unanticipated event that local leaders nonetheless prepared for several decades before when they designated a rural economic zone on the outskirts of town. However, the enterprise zone sat m…
The Society of Algorithms
The pairing of massive data sets with processes-or algorithms-written in computer code to sort through, organize, extract, or mine them has made inroads in almost every major social institution. This article proposes a reading of the scholarly literature concerned with the social implications of this transformation. First, we discuss the rise of a new occupational class, which we call the coding elite. This group has consolidated power through th…
Automated decision-making as domination
Machine learning ethics research is demonstrably skewed. Work that defines fairness as a matter of distribution or allocation and that proposes computationally tractable definitions of fairness has been overproduced and overpublished. This paper takes a sociological approach to explain how subtle processes of social-reproduction within the field of computer science partially explains this outcome. Arguing that allocative fairness is inherently li…
Introduction for the special issue of “Ideologies of AI and the consolidation of power”: Naming power
This introductory essay for the special issue of First Monday, “Ideologies of AI and the consolidation of power,” considers how power operates in AI and machine learning research and publication. Drawing on themes from the seven contributions to this special issue, we argue that what can and cannot be said inside of mainstream computer science publications appears to be constrained by the power, wealth, and ideology of a small cohort of industria…
Computer Science (14 works) · Political science (11 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Business (9 works) · Engineering (7 works) · ICT in Developing Communities (5 works) · Internet privacy (5 works) · The Internet (5 works) · World Wide Web (5 works) · Economics (4 works)