RESEARCHER | AUTHOR | ACTIVIST
Professor of Communication Science at the University of South Africa.
JULIE REID
LATEST
WORK
SCAM INC.
DELUSIVE SPEECH IN THE SHARING ECONOMY
AVAILABLE NOW IN HARDBACK FROM ROUTLEDGE AND AMAZON.
EBOOK ON THE KINDLE STORE.
PAPERBACK COMING SOON.
"We put our lives in the hands of strangers whose work is facilitated by tech oligarchs. We get into their cars. We stay in their bedrooms. We invite them into our homes. What could possibly go wrong? Julie Reid has assembled a swathe of international case studies which should cause us to pause."
“It’s scary to read about real live stories of people who have been scammed by big tech companies. How it happened, how they got away with it or got caught. These stories serve as warning bells to all of us; hence Julie Reid’s book is useful, with a good fast pace.”
"SCAM Inc. is a unique and example-filled monograph that answers all questions related to how the sharing economy is manipulated and used to SCAM audiences. Readers will love the international examples, the focus on technology, and the attention to familiar organizations."
ARTICLES
LATEST PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
OTHER WORKS
Digitising “The Big Lie”: Algorithmic Curation as an Inhibitor of Media Exposure Diversity Online
While multiple scholarly disciplines have scrutinised algorithms and their social power, this article examines algorithmic recommender systems in terms of their potential to reduce exposure diversity online. The paper positions the debate on algorithmic content curation within the theoretical framework of media diversity studies, emphasising the normative ideal of media diversity as a social good, and examining the impact of algorithmic behaviour on personal autonomy, specifically focusing on exposure diversity in online environments. The discussion then introduces a complementary concept to Pariser’s (2011) notion of the “filter bubble,” namely the shrinkage funnel, and discusses this concept in terms of online exposure diversity, personal choice sovereignty, and its potential to initiate the illusory truth effect. The paper reviews selected examples of content restrictive algorithmic behaviour to demonstrate how shrinkage funnels can undermine personal autonomy and prompt detrimental societal or political outcomes. By distinguishing between filter bubbles and shrinkage funnels, this study provides a foundation for future empirical investigations and potential policy interventions aimed at promoting exposure diversity in algorithmically curated online environments.
Risks of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)-assisted scams on online sharing-economy platforms
The prevalence of scams proliferating via online platforms has been identified as an emerging societal problem resulting in large-scale financial losses for victims. Online scams typically rely for their success on the generation of fake but convincing user profiles to conceal the identities of the scammers from the people being tricked into parting with their money. The increasing sophistication of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), which can produce outputs indistinguishable from real content, thus carries the risk of being adopted by fraudsters to assist in the enactment of online scams. This article considers the risks of the potential uptake and use of GenAI applications by online scammers operating in the sharing economy, with a focus on homestay-marketplace platforms and, in particular, the largest such platform, Airbnb.
