Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

This paper, emerging from the fields of Media Studies and Law, explores the ideas and practices surrounding
the regulation of big data and surveillance. The paper will have two sections. In the first, the formal and
informal layers of regulation that exist around data collection, retention, and sharing practices will be
explored – the emergent sets of laws, rules and norms as well as the code formations and the ways in which
these practices are reshaping our cultures and cultural understandings. The second will focus on how data
retention laws, along with various anti-terror laws in Australia are impacting the ability of the media to fulfil
its (diminishing) role as democratic watchdog. It will create an overview of the complex situation in an
attempt to understand the mechanisms and overlapping layers involved in the flows of power and control
emerging through the socio-technical advent of surveillance and large scale data.
Dong Hyun Song* & Chang Yong Son
protection
The Dilemma of Big Data Policy between commercial principle and privacy
This paper examines big data policies in Korea, focusing on reviewing conflict of interest issues. “Disruptive
innovation” relating to Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is having a significant impact on
the communication market and society. Big Data is one of those technologies and it is bringing
unprecedented benefit to humanity. According to Gartner’s Prediction 2015 (Enterprise Irregulars), big data
is no longer an innovative technology. Rather, it is a fundamental technology that enhances other new
technologies” materialisation and incorporation into society. However, policy makers and government
agencies hold concerns regarding the spread of big data technology in different industries without
appropriate legal guidelines and possible data manipulation by these sectors. For example, EC”s “Towards a
Thriving Data-Driven Economy” (July 2014) and the U.S.’s “Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving
Values” (May 2014) well reflected the state’s willingness to use big data as a new tool for invigorating the
economy. The government’s aim is to develop a state-centric framework in order to control non-state
actors” uses of personal data. In the same context, having realized the opportunities big data presents, the
Korean government officially announced in January 2016 the revision of the Personal Information Protection
Act to support local enterprises’ data use as part of an economic reinvigoration strategy. In particular, the
Korean government officially announced such policy framework changes to allow the enterprises’ personal
data uses by shifting for an “Opt-Out” system rather than an “Opt-In” one (YonhapNews, 2016). By doing so,
the enterprises will be able to use personal data without the consent of the subject as long as it is processed
as anonymized data. However, several incidents relating to the profit motivated companies” illegal personal
data trade have been identified. In line with the emergence of the new data morphology in the Korean
context, this paper reviews the current policy changes relating to big data uses compared to the unethical
uses of the data trade. For this, the paper adopts the theoretical framework of Des Freedman’s “policy
silence”(2010) and Arjun Appadurai’s “-scape” theory(1996) in order to analyse the Korean internet policies
on big data as well as to understand the perceptions that stakeholders in Korea have regarding the big data
utilization.
Juhana Venäläinen
Data centres and the discoursive performances of materiality in “immaterial production”
Data centres – the industrial-scale server plants sustaining cloud computing, big data operations, and all of
the quotidian social networking – can be understood as the veritable cornerstones of the digital economy.
While the creation of economic value rendered possible by these infrastructures has sometimes been
examined under the rubric of “immaterial production”, it is also becoming more widely acknowledged that
the broadening of the digital economy is complexly tangled with the material environment and even has
significant environmental impacts (e.g. via energy consumption). In this presentation, I will examine how the
underlying materialities of data centres are represented in technology journalism and environmental
critique. These different performances of materiality have manifold ethico-political implications: they can do
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