School of Social and Political Science

Description

During the 2000s the datafication of society and mass surveillance via apps and social media encouraged government and business to explore how they could use these infrastructures to shape the behaviour of their users, and their citizens. IN these talks we look at two different approaches taken by government to encourage pro-social behaviour among their citizens. The older programme is the Chinese social credit system - proposed as a way to build trust in a society wracked with antisocial behaviour by businesses and individuals. While social media firms were experimenting with nudging and dark patterns to keep us busy online and make us ripe targets for advertising, the Chinese government drew on ideas of credit scores to propose a system of rewards for citizens according to good behaviour that would be tracked though government and commercial databases.  More recently the UK government has dived headlong in to buying targeted advertising  - on the information infrastructures of 'surveillance capitalism' - with the aim of nudging us to be more healthy, not to break the law, or get our friends to behave better. In these two talks we put these two approaches back to back and see what comes out!

Dr Ben Collier, STIS

Influence Government - the UK government and police use of social media adverts to change our behaviour

In a context of multiple overlapping crises, novel and emerging forms of harm, and the legacy of more than a decade of austerity, UK police forces are turning to an emerging mode of law enforcement, which we call influence policing. This uses the technologies of the Internet platforms to conduct digital influence campaigns within the UK in the name of crime prevention. These campaigns use sophisticated targeting of messages to directly ‘nudge’ behaviour and shape the culture of particular groups. They began in counter-radicalisation as part of the UK’s Prevent programme, but have since moved into a range of other policing areas, from online child abuse to domestic violence, knife crime, and cybercrime. By targeting people based on the words they use on Twitter, interests picked up from browsing and purchasing behaviour, fine-detail location, or Google searches, these police campaigns aim to use behavioural psychology to prevent crime. Examples include: adverts for drug counselling services appearing on the mobile phones of young men from deprived areas in their own dialect and accent when they walk near a hospital; fear-based adverts from the UK Home Office using detailed behavioural profiles to deter asylum seekers in Calais from attempting a Channel crossing; NCA nudge ads deterring children using Google to search for illegal services; and counter-terror adverts displaying on the phones of people walking within a set radius of high-security buildings; among a wide range of others. We discuss the ethical and theoretical implications of this new mode of algorithmically-enabled policing using analysis of a dataset of more than 12,000 adverts and in-depth fieldwork with Police Scotland’s dedicated strategic communications team.

Bio: Ben's research sits at the intersection of Criminology and Science and Technology Studies, drawing theory and methods from both. He studies how digital infrastructures become sites where power of different kinds is exerted. Using qualitative, computational, and statistical approaches, his research falls into three strands.  The first involves large-scale ethnographic studies of digital infrastructure, such as my research on the Tor network (the subject of a book with MIT Press: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262548182/tor/). The second focuses on how digital technologies and infrastructures become used for crime and resistance, drawing on a mix of ethnographic and AI/'data science' approaches. The third looks at digital infrastructure and state power, including in-depth studies and evaluations of law enforcement interventions (such as FBI takedowns) and a recent project looking at the use of digital influence campaigns by law enforcement and government to shape the behaviour and culture of the public and achieve preventative policy goals. He draws on a range of theoretical perspectives in his work, most prominently Stuart Hall's cultural studies scholarship and Susan Leigh Star's approach to studying the social worlds of digital infrastructure.

Mr Yiping Cao, Business School

Nudge towards a trustworthy society in the information age: using Qianjiang Fen as a case study

Since 2010 the Cninese government has promoted the concept of 'social credit' as a mechanism to encourage pro-social behaviour in the face of high levels of mistrust especially related to business and product quality. In this talk Yiping draws on his research and fieldwork in the city of Hangzhou, where the city government attempted to turn this policy idea in to a working social intervention. The 'chinese social credit score' (SCS) has been one of the more controversial ideas to come out of 2010s, and has also been very difficult to implement, let alone derive measurable social change from.  What are the underlying ideas of SCS and why are they so hard to implement?

Bio:Yiping Cao is a Year 2 PhD Management student in the Strategy Group at the Business School. Prior to his studies, Yiping gained valuable technical and social knowledge in the digital media industry through two years of work experience (before September 2022) at ByteDance Inc. (the parent company of TikTok) and its competitor, Kwai Inc. Beijing. He holds a MScR in Digital Media and Culture from the University of Edinburgh and a bachelor's degree from Soochow University in China. 

Yiping navigates the complex intersection of surveillance and science and technology studies, utilizing both fields' diverse theories and methods. His research examines the dynamic between data-driven technologies and public management, primarily focusing on qualitative aspects. Currently, Yiping delves into the impact and intricacies of China's Social Credit System. He dissects not only the system's evolution, variations, and implementation processes but also the fascinating performativity arising from interactions, negotiations, and collaborations between various stakeholders during its development.

FOLLOWED BY ‘DATA DRINKS’ SOCIAL MEETUP