Jo Pierson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3735739 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jo Pierson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jo |
| FAMILY NAME | Pierson |
| SIGNATURE | PIERSON J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vrije Universiteit Brussel |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9077-6229 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
“ In a way, I want TikTok to tell me what I want. . . ” Users’ experience of TikTok as a televisual algorithmic flow
This article revisits Williams’s concept of flow, Firth’s notion of algorithmic flow, and Picone et al.’s concept of Small Acts of Engagement (SAOE) to examine how users experience TikTok’s algorithmic flow. SAOE are understood as low-effort, everyday acts through which users negotiate their identities and shape their digital consumption. While SAOE have been a valuable lens for understanding user agency on earlier social media platforms, we argu…
Affordances-in-Practice
Social norms are flexible regulating forces of human behavior. They are shaped by humans, whose actions in turn are shaped by their environment, including the online social spaces they venture into. The objective of this research is to create an understanding of how the affordances of social media platforms shape social norm dynamics in online publics, particularly in climate change publics. For this purpose, we make a comparative analysis of the…
Repairing what’s not broken – Algorithm repair manual as reflexivity device
In this article, we outline an innovative participatory method for reflexive engagement with algorithmic systems and the underlying processes of datafication that accompany them. Faced with the challenges of thinking critically and reflexively about algorithmic systems, both as non-expert individuals and expert researchers, we develop and elaborate on an approach for engaging participants in thinking with, – through and – about algorithmic artifa…
Governing artificial intelligence in the media and communications sector
The article identifies critical blindspots in current European AI policies and explores the impact of AI technologies in the media and communications sector, based on a novel multi-level analytical framework
Walkshops – Testing a Low Threshold Methodology for Participatory City Making
This research is about an inclusive, participatory methodology for smart city research: walking in the ‘datafied’ city. So-called walkshops facilitate experiences of and discussion about the environment in which social challenges arise, together with urban dwellers who may perceive them in different ways than decision-makers. We are investigating if walkshops provide a low-threshold methodology for meaningful involvement of all urban dwellers in …
Enhancing human agency through redress in Artificial Intelligence Systems
How to Be Algorithmically Governed Like That
If users are being $2 algorithms, and companies and regulators are proposing ways for $2 algorithms, with this paper we would like to discuss and propose a third type of governance — one where users have agency, control and governing power(s) over algorithmic systems and their outputs. Our main research question is how do we enable users to actively govern algorithms, instead of passively being governed by them? And what do the users need in orde…
The right to the city and data protection for developing citizen-centric digital cities
Smart city urban development seems inevitable for the future of our cities, but who should decide what that future should be like and whose interest’s smart urbanism serves? The ‘Right to the City’ calls for citizens as ‘users’ of cities to be integral parts to the socio-technological processes that shape urban space. This article explores how citizens can participate meaningfully, and whether data protection rights can be instrumental to this ob…
Digital platforms as entangled infrastructures
Digital platforms have increasingly become accepted and trusted by European citizens as indispensable utilities for social interaction and communication in everyday life. This article aims to analyze how trust in and dependence of these ubiquitous platforms for mediated communication is configured and the kind of consequences this has for user (dis)empowerment and public values. Our analysis builds on insights from the domestication perspective a…
The Right to the City and Data Protection
In digital cities, urban space integrates physical and digital worlds. Information and communication technologies, often controlled by private companies, become ubiquitous, not least to capture and process (personal) data. While private governance can reconfigure public values and relations between public institutions and citizens, the question arises who decides what cities become, whose interests they serve. This paper presents ongoing research…
Practical AI Transparency
How does one do research on algorithms and their outputs when confronted with the inherent algorithmic opacity and black box-ness as well as with the limitations of API-based research and the data access gaps imposed by platforms’ gate-keeping practices? This article outlines the methodological steps we undertook to manoeuvre around the above-mentioned obstacles. It is a “byproduct” of our investigation into datafication and the way how algorithm…
Privacy and Identity Management. Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in the Age of Big Data
The Handbook of Privacy Studies
Governing online platforms
Online platforms, from Facebook to Twitter, and from Coursera to Uber, have become deeply involved in a wide range of public activities, including journalism, civic engagement, education, and transport. As such, they have started to play a vital role in the realization of important public values and policy objectives associated with these activities. Based on insights from theories about risk sharing and the problem of many hands, this article de…
Medea
Since 2016, hobby metal-detecting is legal in Flanders (Belgium), although it was unofficially tolerated for many years before. However, research on metal-detected artefacts in Flanders is hindered by a low reporting rate. The MEDEA project aims to address this by encouraging detectorists to record their finds on an online platform. Finds experts are invited to enrich records with further information and thus instigate a rewarding feedback cycle.…
Social Media, Delinguistification and Colonization of Lifeworld
The article critically investigates, from an interdisciplinary perspective, how the current evolution of social media-like social network sites-interferes with the balance between private, commercial, and public space. We build on the concepts of lifeworld and systems, developed in Habermas' theory of communicative action. The discussion is supported and enriched by the work of Feenberg and van Dijck, integrating insights from Science and Technol…
Blending mass self-communication with advertising in Facebook and LinkedIn
The commodification process on Facebook and LinkedIn limits the potential of mass self-communication on these SNS. This is especially noticeable with regard to personal identifiable information (PII) used in advertising. This article is an analysis of Facebook and LinkedIn through desk research and website analysis of their advertising products. We illustrate how the commodification of personal identifiable information influences user empowerment…
Audience measurement and digitalization
The article fits in the broader context of how digitalization affects the television value network and the changing roles of different actors. The focus is on how audiences or users might (or might not) challenge the power relations between these actors. For this we discuss the role of audience measurement in the television business model as well as the challenges for accurate audience measurement due to digitalization. The article begins by desc…
New Media Technologies and User Empowerment
Contents: Yves Punie: Introduction: New Media Technologies and User Empowerment. Is there a Happy Ending? - Enid Mante-Meijer/Eugene Loos: Innovation and the Role of Push and Pull - Valerie Frissen/Mijke Slot: The Return of the Bricoleur: Redefining Media Business - Serge Proulx/Lorna Heaton: Forms of User Contribution in Online Communities: Mechanisms of Mutual Recognition between Contributors - Aphra Kerr/Stefano de Paoli/Christiano Storni: Ret…
Domesticating New Media
This chapter focuses on how the newspaper as a medium is in the middle of a transition from an analogue “mobile” medium to a digital mobile medium. The newspaper has in fact always been a “mobile” medium, in the sense that readers could take this news medium with them on public transport, in the café, in the waiting room, or on other public places. In the first phase of digitization the newspaper got fixed to a desktop computer or at best to a la…
Walking the Interface
Configuring Living Labs For A 'Thick' Understanding Of Innovation
The paper examines the living lab as an approach within communication studies for examining the naturalistic involvement of users in ICT design, based on ethnographic principles. First a more precise definition of the living lab is presented, indicating the epistemological background. Next the different phases of our living lab configuration are elaborated, illustrated by a research project on a handheld electronic reading device (e-paper). Final…
Governing online platforms
Online platforms, from Facebook to Twitter, and from Coursera to Uber, have become deeply involved in a wide range of public activities, including journalism, civic engagement, education, and transport. As such, they have started to play a vital role in the realization of important public values and policy objectives associated with these activities. Based on insights from theories about risk sharing and the problem of many hands, this article de…
Configuring Living Labs For A 'Thick' Understanding Of Innovation
The paper examines the living lab as an approach within communication studies for examining the naturalistic involvement of users in ICT design, based on ethnographic principles. First a more precise definition of the living lab is presented, indicating the epistemological background. Next the different phases of our living lab configuration are elaborated, illustrated by a research project on a handheld electronic reading device (e-paper). Final…
Medea
Since 2016, hobby metal-detecting is legal in Flanders (Belgium), although it was unofficially tolerated for many years before. However, research on metal-detected artefacts in Flanders is hindered by a low reporting rate. The MEDEA project aims to address this by encouraging detectorists to record their finds on an online platform. Finds experts are invited to enrich records with further information and thus instigate a rewarding feedback cycle.…
Digital platforms as entangled infrastructures
Digital platforms have increasingly become accepted and trusted by European citizens as indispensable utilities for social interaction and communication in everyday life. This article aims to analyze how trust in and dependence of these ubiquitous platforms for mediated communication is configured and the kind of consequences this has for user (dis)empowerment and public values. Our analysis builds on insights from the domestication perspective a…
Practical AI Transparency
How does one do research on algorithms and their outputs when confronted with the inherent algorithmic opacity and black box-ness as well as with the limitations of API-based research and the data access gaps imposed by platforms’ gate-keeping practices? This article outlines the methodological steps we undertook to manoeuvre around the above-mentioned obstacles. It is a “byproduct” of our investigation into datafication and the way how algorithm…
Social Media, Delinguistification and Colonization of Lifeworld
The article critically investigates, from an interdisciplinary perspective, how the current evolution of social media-like social network sites-interferes with the balance between private, commercial, and public space. We build on the concepts of lifeworld and systems, developed in Habermas' theory of communicative action. The discussion is supported and enriched by the work of Feenberg and van Dijck, integrating insights from Science and Technol…
Blending mass self-communication with advertising in Facebook and LinkedIn
The commodification process on Facebook and LinkedIn limits the potential of mass self-communication on these SNS. This is especially noticeable with regard to personal identifiable information (PII) used in advertising. This article is an analysis of Facebook and LinkedIn through desk research and website analysis of their advertising products. We illustrate how the commodification of personal identifiable information influences user empowerment…
Configuring Living Labs For A 'Thick' Understanding Of Innovation
The paper examines the living lab as an approach within communication studies for examining the naturalistic involvement of users in ICT design, based on ethnographic principles. First a more precise definition of the living lab is presented, indicating the epistemological background. Next the different phases of our living lab configuration are elaborated, illustrated by a research project on a handheld electronic reading device (e-paper). Final…
Walking the Interface
Domesticating New Media
This chapter focuses on how the newspaper as a medium is in the middle of a transition from an analogue “mobile” medium to a digital mobile medium. The newspaper has in fact always been a “mobile” medium, in the sense that readers could take this news medium with them on public transport, in the café, in the waiting room, or on other public places. In the first phase of digitization the newspaper got fixed to a desktop computer or at best to a la…
New Media Technologies and User Empowerment
Contents: Yves Punie: Introduction: New Media Technologies and User Empowerment. Is there a Happy Ending? - Enid Mante-Meijer/Eugene Loos: Innovation and the Role of Push and Pull - Valerie Frissen/Mijke Slot: The Return of the Bricoleur: Redefining Media Business - Serge Proulx/Lorna Heaton: Forms of User Contribution in Online Communities: Mechanisms of Mutual Recognition between Contributors - Aphra Kerr/Stefano de Paoli/Christiano Storni: Ret…
Audience measurement and digitalization
The article fits in the broader context of how digitalization affects the television value network and the changing roles of different actors. The focus is on how audiences or users might (or might not) challenge the power relations between these actors. For this we discuss the role of audience measurement in the television business model as well as the challenges for accurate audience measurement due to digitalization. The article begins by desc…
Blending mass self-communication with advertising in Facebook and LinkedIn
The commodification process on Facebook and LinkedIn limits the potential of mass self-communication on these SNS. This is especially noticeable with regard to personal identifiable information (PII) used in advertising. This article is an analysis of Facebook and LinkedIn through desk research and website analysis of their advertising products. We illustrate how the commodification of personal identifiable information influences user empowerment…
Social Media, Delinguistification and Colonization of Lifeworld
The article critically investigates, from an interdisciplinary perspective, how the current evolution of social media-like social network sites-interferes with the balance between private, commercial, and public space. We build on the concepts of lifeworld and systems, developed in Habermas' theory of communicative action. The discussion is supported and enriched by the work of Feenberg and van Dijck, integrating insights from Science and Technol…
Medea
Since 2016, hobby metal-detecting is legal in Flanders (Belgium), although it was unofficially tolerated for many years before. However, research on metal-detected artefacts in Flanders is hindered by a low reporting rate. The MEDEA project aims to address this by encouraging detectorists to record their finds on an online platform. Finds experts are invited to enrich records with further information and thus instigate a rewarding feedback cycle.…
The Handbook of Privacy Studies
Governing online platforms
Online platforms, from Facebook to Twitter, and from Coursera to Uber, have become deeply involved in a wide range of public activities, including journalism, civic engagement, education, and transport. As such, they have started to play a vital role in the realization of important public values and policy objectives associated with these activities. Based on insights from theories about risk sharing and the problem of many hands, this article de…
Privacy and Identity Management. Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency in the Age of Big Data
The Right to the City and Data Protection
In digital cities, urban space integrates physical and digital worlds. Information and communication technologies, often controlled by private companies, become ubiquitous, not least to capture and process (personal) data. While private governance can reconfigure public values and relations between public institutions and citizens, the question arises who decides what cities become, whose interests they serve. This paper presents ongoing research…
Practical AI Transparency
How does one do research on algorithms and their outputs when confronted with the inherent algorithmic opacity and black box-ness as well as with the limitations of API-based research and the data access gaps imposed by platforms’ gate-keeping practices? This article outlines the methodological steps we undertook to manoeuvre around the above-mentioned obstacles. It is a “byproduct” of our investigation into datafication and the way how algorithm…
How to Be Algorithmically Governed Like That
If users are being $2 algorithms, and companies and regulators are proposing ways for $2 algorithms, with this paper we would like to discuss and propose a third type of governance — one where users have agency, control and governing power(s) over algorithmic systems and their outputs. Our main research question is how do we enable users to actively govern algorithms, instead of passively being governed by them? And what do the users need in orde…
The right to the city and data protection for developing citizen-centric digital cities
Smart city urban development seems inevitable for the future of our cities, but who should decide what that future should be like and whose interest’s smart urbanism serves? The ‘Right to the City’ calls for citizens as ‘users’ of cities to be integral parts to the socio-technological processes that shape urban space. This article explores how citizens can participate meaningfully, and whether data protection rights can be instrumental to this ob…
Digital platforms as entangled infrastructures
Digital platforms have increasingly become accepted and trusted by European citizens as indispensable utilities for social interaction and communication in everyday life. This article aims to analyze how trust in and dependence of these ubiquitous platforms for mediated communication is configured and the kind of consequences this has for user (dis)empowerment and public values. Our analysis builds on insights from the domestication perspective a…
Governing artificial intelligence in the media and communications sector
The article identifies critical blindspots in current European AI policies and explores the impact of AI technologies in the media and communications sector, based on a novel multi-level analytical framework
Walkshops – Testing a Low Threshold Methodology for Participatory City Making
This research is about an inclusive, participatory methodology for smart city research: walking in the ‘datafied’ city. So-called walkshops facilitate experiences of and discussion about the environment in which social challenges arise, together with urban dwellers who may perceive them in different ways than decision-makers. We are investigating if walkshops provide a low-threshold methodology for meaningful involvement of all urban dwellers in …
Enhancing human agency through redress in Artificial Intelligence Systems
Repairing what’s not broken – Algorithm repair manual as reflexivity device
In this article, we outline an innovative participatory method for reflexive engagement with algorithmic systems and the underlying processes of datafication that accompany them. Faced with the challenges of thinking critically and reflexively about algorithmic systems, both as non-expert individuals and expert researchers, we develop and elaborate on an approach for engaging participants in thinking with, – through and – about algorithmic artifa…
Affordances-in-Practice
Social norms are flexible regulating forces of human behavior. They are shaped by humans, whose actions in turn are shaped by their environment, including the online social spaces they venture into. The objective of this research is to create an understanding of how the affordances of social media platforms shape social norm dynamics in online publics, particularly in climate change publics. For this purpose, we make a comparative analysis of the…
“ In a way, I want TikTok to tell me what I want. . . ” Users’ experience of TikTok as a televisual algorithmic flow
This article revisits Williams’s concept of flow, Firth’s notion of algorithmic flow, and Picone et al.’s concept of Small Acts of Engagement (SAOE) to examine how users experience TikTok’s algorithmic flow. SAOE are understood as low-effort, everyday acts through which users negotiate their identities and shape their digital consumption. While SAOE have been a valuable lens for understanding user agency on earlier social media platforms, we argu…
Computer Science (18 works) · Political science (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Business (11 works) · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection (9 works) · Internet privacy (7 works) · Public relations (7 works) · Social science (7 works) · World Wide Web (6 works) · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI (5 works)