Please help me.
Would anyone please tell me what "ab nihilo" means in the following context and is it a French expression? This text is excerpted from Digital Sociology which is edited by Kate Orton-Johnson and Nick Prior, chapter 6: Afterword: Digital Spaces, Sociology and Surveillance.
In social media worlds the outcomes are not predetermined but they do depend on the activities of users in conjunction with the sort of tech-agency (through software) described by Burrows and Beer. And, importantly, they are never innocent. Thus, the mantra of ‘user-generated content’ has to be understood not as some free creation ab nihilo but framed and even in part constituted by codes of commerce, entertainment and government.
Would anyone please tell me what "ab nihilo" means in the following context and is it a French expression? This text is excerpted from Digital Sociology which is edited by Kate Orton-Johnson and Nick Prior, chapter 6: Afterword: Digital Spaces, Sociology and Surveillance.
In social media worlds the outcomes are not predetermined but they do depend on the activities of users in conjunction with the sort of tech-agency (through software) described by Burrows and Beer. And, importantly, they are never innocent. Thus, the mantra of ‘user-generated content’ has to be understood not as some free creation ab nihilo but framed and even in part constituted by codes of commerce, entertainment and government.