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Pt 1 highlights from our 1st panelist of the day: What is Democratic about Technologies? Johnathan Albright @d1gi spoke about the data and structural aspects that are behind news events and the amplification aspects of propaganda and misinformation. #digidems #digitaldemocracy 
Albright mapped out the 2016 media ecosystem and found that much of the far right and extreme views were populating through public API resources, things like wikipedia forces and Youtube. The manipulation of public networks, then..
makes it important to understand more about the structural ecosystem, the pathways and the amplification of bias views that people find through information technologies. The positioning of accounts within the network reveals the tactical position of particular content and media..
and how certain links create the network map, most of these things are structural and ecological. Content is sometimes blackhole. It's important to understand where the source is, how this information becomes amplified, distributed, remixed and intermediated.
There's a very important underside of this network, the shadow network, that deploys oversized impacts of various select few accounts. Using forensic techniques can tell us the reasons/structures, financially and otherwise, that influence these platforms and content distribution.
They show us the impact of outside automation, what he calls rally networks, the organizational amplification, that arise from the monetization, data tracking, and data profiling that emerge from API and network structure.
Reaching people and reaching citizens often is local, issue based, and racial. They connect with local audiences , send out local news, until the time comes to push content that wedges issues.
It is a very sophisticated mechanism, with well-timed pushes of certain issues that epitomize certain wedge issues when they need to create conspiracy ecosystems for the spread of disinformation.
Through mapping techniques, we can see so much more, why the results and what they look like from a structural perspective. Through mapping the tactical maneuvers that work in, during, and through media attacks, you can see the pathways, the nervous system of media distribution
Platforms are the supporting infrastructure that provides our ability to interact, this is the core problem when we talk about democracy. We have to deploy techniques that support understanding more about the infrastructural flaws that impede democratizing these technologies.
