Yarden Skop

Large and powerful language models such as OpenAI’s GPT model family, Google’s LaMDA and BERT or Meta’s LlaMA are integral to many applications, such as translation, summarization or language generation. They have become an inherent part of current everyday activities and working practices. These models produce and process language in an impressively convincing human-like manner, but also repeatedly generate outputs that appear untrustworthy and factually incorrect. In computer science (Ji et al. 2023) and popular discourse alike this phenomenon is called hallucination. The term is used broadly to describe various forms of untruthfulness, from factual errors to inconsistencies between prompt and output. This article discusses the hallucination metaphor guided by STS perspectives and takes software documentation as its main corpus of analysis. We examine model papers and documentation from leading tech companies to trace the hallucination metaphor and the discursive work it does. We claim that tech companies anthropomorphize the models, relieving them and themselves from responsibility over non-factual outputs by normalizing the use of the metaphor. Models are relegated to two main positions: either a learning child that needs time to develop or an illogic agent, a position that we connect to cultural scripts of madness.

Social media platforms have become a double-edged sword for human rights activism, simultaneously offering a stage and facilitating wide-reaching communication and connection, while also imposing censorship through stringent and opaque content governance. This study focuses on the over enforcement of content moderation on social media platforms, affecting activists who tried to engage online publics with issues of forced evictions and displacements in Sheikh Jarrah (SJ) and Silwan, in occupied East Jerusalem in May 2021 --- a critical juncture in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. By analyzing responses from a survey of 201 users who reported experiencing censorship, and interviews with 14 political influencers and activists, we uncover how these individuals navigate the intricate landscape of social media censorship. The findings reveal a continuum of different ways of responding to censorship, from self-censorship to proactive advocacy of policy change, that highlight the ingenuity activists can employ to bypass content restrictions. This research not only contributes to our understanding of the interaction between social media's technical affordances and activist responses but also discusses broader implications for the design and governance of digital platforms in supporting democratic discourse and human rights activism in conflict zones. This study enriches the ongoing dialogue about social media's dual role as both a facilitator and a controller of public discourse, emphasizing the need for platforms to consider the profound impacts of their technical and policy decisions on global activism.

This SIG delves into the multifaceted dynamics of conducting ethnographic research in volatile environments marked by political unrest, conflict, economic or natural disasters. Our aim is to start nuanced discussions to critically examine the ethical, methodological, and psychological challenges of conducting research in these environments. We discuss the adaptation of ethnographic methods to prioritize safety for participants and researchers, emphasizing ethical and moral considerations in unstable environments. We will explore the impact of researchers’ presence in sensitive environments, focusing on establishing relationships, understanding, and respecting local customs, and minimizing disturbance to the community. Moreover, we address the emotional burden borne by both researchers and participants, sharing strategies for building resilience and managing secondary trauma. Using real-life case studies, this SIG aims to provide an in-depth exploration of the practical challenges and ethical dilemmas, sharing insightful lessons and valuable perspectives to ethnographers, enhancing their approach to research in such demanding contexts.

After Russia’s war against Ukraine destroyed people’s ability to move and communicate freely in Ukraine, many Ukrainians turned to social media and messenger apps, especially Telegram, to produce and share information. The vast amount of this digital data is privatized, ephemeral, and difficult to utilize for research, raising urgent questions about its sustainable accessibility and usability. In this article, we explore a specific aspect of digital archive sustainability – the use of digital archives to preserve platform data related to Russia’s war against Ukraine – by focusing on data integrity, usability, and ethics. Our research is based on a case study of an interdisciplinary Data Sprint, “Russia’s War in Ukraine,” organized in collaboration with a Telegram Archive, in which academics and practitioners investigated qualitative approaches to studying a war on Telegram. In the article, we explore the possibilities and drawbacks of sustainable use of the Telegram Archive for qualitative approaches – semantic, visual, spatial, and link analysis – to working with large amounts of data. We argue that the sustainability of digital archives depends not only on their use, based on consistently stored and accessible data, but also the ethical aspects of their use for diverse research needs.

Social media technologies have been empowering to some human rights activists, providing a platform for exercising free speech and mobilization. However, many activists have voiced concerns and shared experiences they understand as considerable censorship on these platforms, under the guise of content governance. In an effort to increase the understanding and transparency of content moderation practices during conflicts, this study investigates the perceived reasons for censorship as understood by activists and the explanations made visible to activists by social media platforms, if any were given. Our case study to examine these platforms-activists relations is the events which occurred in May 2021 in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which was a significant moment in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and garnered international attention. The over enforcement of content moderation faced by Palestinians and their allies during these events on social media raised concerns about freedom of speech and the role of technology in activism. Our study deepens understanding through findings from a survey of 201 social media users who reported potentially unfair moderation decisions, and from 12 interviews with political influencers to grasp the broader implications of content moderation on activism. The findings of this study indicate a substantial disparity between the official explanations made visible to the activists by the social media platforms, and the reasons as perceived by users. This has significant implications, both socially and for social media platforms -- as CSCW and Group work environments --- on activist groups and the potentialities of democratic discourse. This study serves as an important contribution to the debate on the role of social media content moderation in human rights activism, particularly in conflict zones.