Journal of Digital Media & Policy - Volume 10, Issue 3, 2019

This article undertakes a content analysis of the Uber mobile interface as depicted in a patent application for a process that integrates and automates social media information to match potential UberPool riders. As depicted in the patent application, the Uber interface is a critical locus for incorporating social media information and rendering this information usable and palpable for users. By aligning the Uber interface with the communicative and symbolic richness of iconic imagery, I argue for the Uber interface as a juncture for critical abstractions between the manifestation of social interactions appearing to users on the Uber interface and Uber’s techno-economic motivations to shape, configure and guide user enactment of sociality. By designing for simplicity, the Uber interface abstracts between the push-button ease of undertaking sociality and the need to reflect on circumstances giving rise to these prescribed forms of sociality. Through this viewpoint, I specify abstractions between simplified forms of sociality presented to users and Uber techno-economic motivations configuring interfacial sociality, implicating algorithmic objectivity, connective friending and programmed sociality as unseen forces configuring and prescribing social interactions for user engagement.

This article revisits the concepts of ‘diversity’ and ‘visibility’, from the perspective of age relations to consider how these key metrics in the assessment of social inclusion through media representation can be usefully applied to the analysis of digital public service interfaces. Against the backdrop of changes in the age composition of populations, and an expanding role of digital media in ‘digital by default’ public service provision age remains a neglected dimension of social inequality in media and communications research. This article investigates questions of diversity and social inclusion in old age drawing on a study of visual imagery in public sector websites in the United Kingdom. The analysis integrates insights from media, technology studies, communications policy and critical social gerontology. We identify three patterns in visual imagery: (1) stereotypical representations of group membership as homogenous in terms of age groups, sex, health status and ethnicity, with older adults typically represented as white, (un)healthy men or women; (2) new visibilities, of older adults as socially and culturally diverse groups; and (3) new approaches to inclusive digital service design where age becomes an invisible social demographic. We discuss implications for policy and research into diversity, digitalization and digital public service interfaces.

The merging of broadcast platforms, the Internet and social media has challenged the former state-owned broadcasters of Indonesia to find new content strategies and forms suited to the networked media environment. Over the past decade, the arrival of digital technology and rapid growth of social media has broken down the previous linear model of service delivery in Indonesian broadcasting. However, national policy on this issue remains lacking. At present, the Indonesian Broadcast Law (Law No. 32 of 2002) only gives the country’s public radio an ability to use the spectrum in the analogue model. Digital migration, as well as legal protection of social media services, remains an ongoing debate among policy-makers, that will allow free market competition, in particular to opportune the interface of service providers and content producers. Drawing from semi-structured interviews, observations and regulatory reviews, this article broadly investigates the introduction of digital interfaces in the new public service broadcasters of Indonesia, with particular focus on the process through which Indonesian PSBs have embraced the digital media environment to enable the flow of information and public participation between the media entities and their publics. In this article, I present both technology and regulatory perspectives by emphasizing the dynamics of the digital media modes of public service delivery, particularly those through which analogue broadcasts and social media have sought new ways to intertwine. In detail, I will examine certain interactive services applied by Radio Republik Indonesia (RRI), the flagship of Indonesian national public radio, namely RRI-Play, RRI.co.id and RRI-Net, to manage audience participation. Since 2016, these digital platforms have mediated public access to RRI content, generated data on media users, and monitored technological performance. In inspecting these platforms, I refer firstly to the normative debate of public service broadcasters as ‘deliberative public sphere’ before segueing into the three public-service functions that are important in social network media landscape: curation, moderation and monitoring. Furthermore, this article analyses problems behind the regulatory design of Indonesian public-service media within the context of digital broadcasts in the country.

Today’s digital media environment and the widespread proliferation of propaganda-driven disinformation confront professional media entities with numerous new challenges, and place a heavier burden on journalists and standards of journalism. This article reviews the pursuit for truth as a basic principle that stays for professional journalism, and further examines the current good practices on self-regulation of disinformation in Europe, in particular the rulings of the Advisory Commission on Counteracting the Propaganda in Eastern Europe. It takes a look at the recent efforts by media associations and companies to self-regulate and to promote media literacy as an antidote to disinformation, as well as the relevant intergovernmental policies in Europe. The conclusions provide recommendations on fine-tuning existing mechanisms to counteract disinformation through media accountability and literacy.

Social media has dramatically transformed world politics, but what social media is doing to democracy has not been thoroughly examined. We need to know Indonesia’s history of the reformation, restoration and economic progress to understand the social media significance in Indonesia’s democratization. Therefore, this article will discuss social media in Indonesian’s political context, focuses on two stages. First is when the technological development in Indonesia supports virtual communities, particularly during the 1998 movement. Second is when social media create a participatory culture or political participation in the 2008 elections onwards, which leads to polarization and division in recent elections across the globes.

Netflix Nations: The Geography of Digital Distribution, Ramon Lobato (2019)

New York: New York University Press, 233 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-47980-494-8, p/bk, £19.98

Online TV, Catherine Johnson (2019)

London and New York: Routledge, 176 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-13822-687-6, h/bk, £110

The Digital Edge: How Black and Latino Youth Navigate Digital Inequality, S. Craig Watkins with Andres Lombana-Bermudez, Alexander Cho, Jacqueline Ryan Vickery, Vivian Shaw and Lauren Weinzimmer (2018)

New York: New York University Press, 291 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-47985-411-0, p/bk, £15.40