Media Distortions: Understanding The Power Behind Spam, Noise, And Other Deviant Media 121

Media Distortions is about the power behind the production of deviant media categories. It shows the politics behind categories we take for granted such as spam and noise, and what it means to our broader understanding of, and engagement with media. The book synthesizes media theory, sound studies, science and technology studies (STS), feminist technoscience, and software studies into a new composition to explore media power. Media Distortions argues that using sound as a conceptual framework is more useful due to its ability to cross boundaries and strategically move between multiple spaces—which is essential for multi-layered mediated spaces. Drawing on repositories of legal, technical and archival sources, the book amplifies three stories about the construction and negotiation of the ‘deviant’ in media. The book starts in the early 20th century with Bell Telephone’s production of noise, tuning into the training of their telephone operators and their involvement with the Noise Abatement Commission in New York City. The next story jumps several decades to the early 2000s focusing on web metric standardization in the European Union and shows how the digital advertising industry constructed web-cookies as legitimate communication while making spam illegal. The final story focuses on the recent decade and the way Facebook filters out antisocial behaviors to engineer a sociality that produces more value. These stories show how deviant categories re-draw boundaries between human and non-human, public and private spaces, and importantly, social and antisocial. Cover 1 Contents 11 List of Figures 15 Acknowledgements 17 List of Abbreviations 21 1. Introduction: Listen Closely 23 Don’t Be Evil! But I’m Not! 26 Conducting Processes 30 Three Distortion Stories 33 Structure of the Book 35 2. Orchestrating Media Power through Sound 41 Re-processing Foucault 42 Sound as a Conceptual Framework 47 Processed Listening: Producing Knowledge in Mediated Spaces 49 Rhythmedia, or Orchestrating Sociality 55 Mediated Territories 63 Mediating Bodies 70 Come to the Dark Side, We Have Cookies 72 Conclusion: What’s in the Mix? 77 3. Noisy Behaviors on the Line 85 The Noise Abatement Commission in Early 20th Century New York City 87 Mapping City Noise 92 No Deal on the Street 98 Selling (the) Telephone 104 Shutting Street Noise 108 Controlling (the Other) Street Rhythm 109 Quieting Noisy Women 112 Connecting Bodies 113 Designing the Communication Line Model 116 Personal Immediacy 120 The Human Information Processors 124 A Design for Living 126 Silencing Dissent 130 Conclusion: Noise Against the Machine 132 4. Fabricating the European Union Safety Net 139 Opening the ‘Back-End’ 142 Governing Softly 147 Baking Cookies into the Ecosystem 148 Inventing Private and Public Spaces 156 Lobbying to Spam 161 Composing the Data Subject 165 Standardizing Metrics 166 Bodies that Count 169 Bidding for Real-Time 174 User Control to Control Users 180 Keep Your Body Safe 184 Conclusion: Brave New Web? 190 5. Engineering the (anti)social 203 Filtering the Unwanted Using Four Mechanisms 207 Modulating Architecture 209 Who Listens to You? 212 Channeling through Your Friends 214 Amplified Listening Capacities 218 Every Breath You Take I’ll Be Listening to You 222 Ordering Algorithms 227 Money, Sorted 228 Standardizing the Digital Advertising Industry 232 Naturalizing Organic Feed 233 Maintaining the Immune System 238 You Better Work 243 Clicking Machine 244 Excessive Behaviors 244 Asking As If It Matters 247 Listening: The Silent Actions that Count 249 Majority Report 251 The Human Processors 253 Filtering the Rubbish 254 Feed the Panel 258 Conclusion: Fileting the Rhythms of Anti-Sociality 261 6. Conclusion: Transducing the Deviant 273 The Power of Sound 276 Creating a Dynamic Database with Processed Listening 279 Deviant Order: How Rhythmedia Orchestrates Sociality 284 "Forget everything you know about spam. Now, let's talk about spam. Digital Distortions is about the power behind producing deviant media categories. This book explores the politics behind categories we take for granted such as spam and noise, and what this power means for our broader understanding of media. Despite being an inseparable part of our lives, we know very little about these media categories. The book synthesizes approaches such as media theory, sound studies, feminist technoscience and software studies into a new composition to explore media power. Through the concepts of processed listening and rhythmedia, Digital Distortions draws on sound and sound's ability to cross boundaries as a conceptual framework to think and examine media power more productively. Drawing on repositories of legal, technical and archival sources, Digital Distortions amplifies three stories about media distortions. The book shows that spam received different names in different periods; it is part of a larger project to influence the way people think, understand, and engage with media. The book starts in the early 20th century with Bell Telephone's production of noise. The next story jumps several decades to the web metric standardization in the European Union and the production of spam. The final story focuses on the 2010s and the way Facebook constructs unwanted behaviours. These stories show how deviant categories re-draw boundaries between human and non-human, public and private spaces, and, importantly, social and antisocial"-- Provided by publisher “Media Distortions provides an original, insightful and engaging counter-account of spam and noise as deviant media which have been paradoxically constituted as such to bring about a series of crucial transformations in our technologies and cultures of communication. Drawing on specific historical case studies and extending right into our present, by reverse engineering of the history of spam, Elinor Carmi brings a fresh perspective to bear on a media phenomenon which has received little critical attention.”--Tiziana Terranova, University of Naples, author of Network Culture: Politics For the Information Age (2004) “'Distort and deviate' is the best summary for the mode of power Elinor Carmi's exciting book analyses. The book's rhythmic approach to noise and spam demonstrates how those seemingly unwanted aspects are at the centre of how contemporary territories and subjectivities are being formed and trained, measured and counted. Media Distortions is essential reading to understand contemporary network culture through a new pair ears, and many many new ideas.”--Jussi Parikka, Winchester School of Art, author of Digital Contagions: A Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses (Peter Lang, 2016) “In Media Distortions, Elinor Carmi offers an innovative approach to digital media. By drawing on sound studies, Media Distortions puts forward a novel conceptual framework of 'processed listening,' which enables us to rethink noises, digital disturbances, spam, and deviant media in our lives. For Carmi, the sound of noise is not a nuisance, but an invitation to reveal hidden power relations that deeply shape who we are and how we think.”--Robert W. Gehl, University of Utah, author of Weaving the Dark Web: Legitimacy on Freenet, Tor, and I2P (2018) “Elinor Carmi offers a lucid and detailed examination of the taken-for-granted 'deviant' categories and processes of spam and noise. Significantly, through the focus on seven strategies of practitioners, the book convincingly demonstrates how common sense perceptions of these two categories are produced by power relations that make up both online and offline spaces of the everyday.”--Evelyn Ruppert, Goldsmiths, University of London, author of Being Digital Citizens (2015) Forget everything you know about spam. Now, let’s talk about spam. Media Distortions is about the power behind producing deviant media categories. This book examines the politics behind categories we take for granted such as spam and noise, and what this power means for our broader understanding of media.