Matías Valderrama Barragán

Thesis Title: Platforms on Trial. Making and not making connections between social media platforms and societal harms during the Facebook Files/Papers controversy.

Drawing upon the work of interrelated fields such as Digital Sociology, Media Studies and Science and Technology Studies, my research project aims to understand how different actors establish, demonstrate, contest or undermine the connection between social media platforms and societal harms. To this end, I am conducting a controversy mapping of the Facebook Files/Papers, a disclosure of Meta's internal research by former employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen. My research examines how these leaks were framed and made public, as well as the multiple strategies of actors in journalism, research, politics and activism to make and unmake the connection between Meta's platforms and multiple issues of social concern.

Biography

Fourth-year ESRC-funded PhD candidate in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick, UK. He is also a research assistant at the Chilean Millennium Nucleus Futures of Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR). His research areas are digital sociology, frames, platform studies, and science, technology and studies.

Publications

Lury, C., Day, S., Simon, A., Tironi, M., Valderrama, M., & Wark, S. (2024). Digital Valuation: Lessons in relevance from the prototyping of a recommendation app. Valuation Studies, 11(1), 38–59. https://doi.org/10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2024.11.1.38-59

Tironi Rodo, M., & Valderrama Barragán, M. (2023). From copper mining to data extractivism? Data worth making at Chile’s Data Observatory Foundation. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 41(3), 411–432. https://doi.org/10.1177/02637758231183719

Tironi, M., & Valderrama, M. (2022). Worth-making in a datafied world: Urban cycling, smart urbanism, and technologies of justification in Santiago de Chile. The Information Society, 38(2), 100-116. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2022.2027587

Valderrama, M. (2021). The Child Alert System and predicting the risk of violations of children’s rights. Derechos Digitales. https://www.derechosdigitales.org/wp-content/uploads/02_Informe-Chile-EN_180222.pdf

Tironi, M., & Valderrama, M. (2021). Microclimates of (in)security in Santiago: Sensors, sensing and sensations. In Klimburg-Witjes, N., Poechhacker, N. & Bowker, G.C. (Eds.) Sensing In/Security: Sensors as Transnational Security Infrastructures (pp. 50-75). Mattering Press. http://doi.org/10.28938/9781912729111

Tironi, M., & Valderrama, M. (2021). Experimenting with the Social life of homes: sensor governmentality and its frictions. Science as Culture, 30(2), 192-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2021.1893682

Tironi, M. & Valderrama, M. (2019). The militarization of the urban sky in Santiago de Chile: the vision multiple of a video-surveillance system of aerostatic balloons. Urban Geography, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1706939

Valderrama, M., & Velasco, P. (2018). Programming creation? An exploration of the socio-technical field of YouTube in Chile. Cuadernos.info, (42), 39-53. https://doi.org/10.7764/cdi.42.1370

Tironi, M. & Valderrama, M. (2018). Acknowledging the idiot in the smart city: Experimentation and citizenship in the making of a low-carbon district in Santiago de Chile. En: A. Karvonen, F. Cugurullo & F. Caprotti (Eds.) Inside Smart Cities (pp. 165-181). New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351166201-11

Tironi, M. & Valderrama, M. (2018). Unpacking a citizen self-tracking device: Smartness and idiocy in the accumulation of cycling mobility data. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 36(2), 294–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775817744781

Valderrama, M. (2016). Siguiendo los hipervínculos de controversias socio-técnicas: el caso de HidroAysén [Following the hyperlinks of socio-technical controversies: the case of HidroAysén]. Virtualis 7(14), 170-205. http://www.revistavirtualis.mx/index.php/virtualis/article/view/193

Valderrama, M. (2016). Los rastros digitales de lo social: Hacia una agenda de estudios digitales latinoamericanos [Digital traces of the social: Towards an agenda for Latin American digital studies]. Contenido. Cultura y Ciencias Sociales 7, 126-149. http://www.revistacontenido.com/los-rastros-digitales-de-lo-social-hacia-una-agenda-de-estudios-digitales-latinoamericanos/

Valderrama, M. (2016). El devenir de la identidad digital: del yo proteico al yo identificado [The turn of digital identity: from the protean self to the identified self]. Paakat: Revista de Tecnología y Sociedad, 6(11), http://www.udgvirtual.udg.mx/paakat/index.php/paakat/issue/view/51 

Interdisciplinary Methodologies

Warwick

2021 Cohort, +3.5

matias.valderrama-barragan@warwick.ac.uk 

@mvaldebLink opens in a new window

Supervisory Team

Prof Noortje Marres

Prof Celia Lury

Memberships

International Sociological Association, Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)

Society for Social Studies of Science