News

05 December 2023
Neues SFB Working Paper Nr. 35 “Kontrapunkte setzen – Digitale Politische Bildung mit ContraPoints”
Sorry, this entry is only available in German.In der neusten Publikation “Kontrapunkte setzen – Digitale...
Neues SFB Working Paper Nr. 35 “Kontrapunkte setzen – Digitale Politische Bildung mit ContraPoints”

Sorry, this entry is only available in German.

In der neusten Publikation “Kontrapunkte setzen – Digitale Politische Bildung mit ContraPoints” in unserer Working Paper Series (No. 35, Dez) setzt sich Julia Bee mit den Potenzialen kreativer Format Politischer Bildung in digitalen Kontexten auseinander. Im Zentrum stehen videoessayistische Gegenformaten von Stiftungen, Institutionen und Vlogger:innen, die darauf abzielen, rechte Metapolitiken zu entlarven und zu erkennen. Sie produzieren Bildungsformate, die nicht nur inhaltlich und informativ, sondern auch ästhetisch und affektiv anknüpfen.

Stiftungen, Institutionen und Vlogger:innen haben in den letzten Jahren angesichts des Rechtsrucks auf Plattformen neue Formate der Politischen Bildung geschaffen. Diese wollen präventiv und intervenierend in rechte Diskurse, Trolling, Fake News und Co. eingreifen. Am Beispiel des Youtube-Kanals ContraPoints untersucht Bee die Formatspezifik der politischen Bildung, die im Anschluss an Donna Haraway als situiertes Wissen verstanden wird.

Julia Bee ist Professorin für Medienästhetik an der Universität Siegen. In ihrer Forschung kombiniert sie ästhetische Phänomene mit Medienphilosophie und Praxistheorie. Dekoloniale und Gender Medien Theorie sind dabei zentral. Derzeitige Forschungsgegenstände bilden dokumentarische Filme, TV-Serien, Vlogs, Installationen, Literatur sowie mobile Medienpraktiken wie Fahrradfahren. Sie ist Teilprojektleiterin des ab Januar 2024 neu geförderten Projekts B09 Fahrradmedien: Kooperative Medien der Mobilität.

Die Publikation „Kontrapunkte setzen – Digitale Politische Bildung mit ContraPoints” wird im Rahmen der Working Paper Series des SFB 1187 „Medien der Kooperation“ veröffentlicht. Die Working Paper Serie versammelt aktuelle Beiträge aus dem Umfeld der inter- und transdisziplinären Medienforschung und bietet die Möglichkeit einer schnellen Veröffentlichung und ersten Verbreitung von am SFB laufenden oder ihm nahestehenden Forschungsarbeiten. Ziel der Reihe ist es, die SFB-Forschung einer breiteren Forschungsgemeinschaft zugänglich zu machen. Alle Working Papers sind über die Website zugänglich oder können in gedruckter Form bei info[æt]sfb1187.uni-siegen.de bestellt werden.

01 December 2023
3 Short-Term Scholarships for PhD-Candidates
The University of Siegen is an interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan university with currently about 18,000...
3 Short-Term Scholarships for PhD-Candidates

The University of Siegen is an interdisciplinary and cosmopolitan university with currently about 18,000 students and a range of subjects from the humanities, social sciences and economics to natural, engineering and life sciences. With over 2,000 employees, we are one of the largest employers in the region and offer a unique environment for teaching, research and further education.

At the University of Siegen, as of 1st of February 2024 (starting date negotiable) the DFG-funded Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1187 „Media of Cooperation“ offers

Three Short-Term Scholarships for PhD-Candidates

 

to promote the work of early-carrier researchers. The duration of the scholarships is 9 to 12 months. A longer-term collaboration with the goal of a doctorate within the CRC is envisaged. The basic amount of the scholarship is based on the maximum rate of the DFG (1.365,- EUR). In addition, an allowance for material expenses and, if applicable, a child allowance will be paid.

CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation“

The CRC is an interdisciplinary research network consisting of 15 projects and more than 60 scientists from the fields of media studies, science and technology studies, ethnology, sociology, linguistics and literature studies, computer science as well as history, education and engineering. It has been funded by the DFG since 2016. The CRC investigates the emergence and dissemination of digitally networked, data-intensive media and understands these as cooperatively accomplished conditions for cooperation. The research of the participating subprojects focuses on data practices and sensory practices that are explored in the situated interplay of media practices, infrastructures and public spheres.

The short-term fellowship program of the CRC provides national and international doctoral students the opportunity to further develop their research project in the CRC, to get to know participating researchers and to exchange ideas with them. The research projects of the scholarship holders should be thematically related to the subprojects of the CRC, so that their work can be supported by the principal investigators and their teams. Scholarship holders are assigned to the Integrated Research Training Group (MGK) of the CRC and benefit from its structured training program. The CRC offers scholarship holders an international environment for interdisciplinary media research as well as an extensive program of events and training in ethnographic, digital, sensor-based and linguistic methods.

Further information on the CRC’s research agenda and subprojects can be found at https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/en.

Your Profile

  • Relevant, above-average degree in one of the disciplines participating in or related to the CRC, preferably in media and cultural studies, sociology or in the field of socio- or business informatics, human-computer interaction or information systems (equivalent to a Master’s degree, Magister, Diplom or Lehramt/Staatsexamen Sek. II)
  • Individual research project in one of the above-mentioned disciplines within the subject area of the CRC. Ideally, you can assign the project to one of the subareas of the CRC –
    infrastructures, publics or praxeology
  • Interest in methods of media research, the analysis of data practices and an affinity for working in an interdisciplinary research environment
  • Willingness to participate in the international event program of the CRC and the MGK
  • Very good written and spoken English language skills

 

Your Tasks

 Expectations of successful candidates:

  • Regular participation and involvement in the events and the training program of the MGK (colloquia, workshops, summer schools, methodology workshops, interdisciplinary groups)
  • Presentation of preliminary results of the individual research project within the MGK colloquium

Equal opportunities and diversity are promoted and actively practiced at the University of Siegen. Applications from women are highly welcome and will be given special consideration in accordance with the federal state equality law. We also welcome applications from people with different personal, social and cultural backgrounds, people with disabilities and those of equal status.

For further information contact Dr. Johannes Schick

E-Mail: johannes.schick[æt]uni-siegen.de

 

Please send your application documents (letter of motivation, curriculum vitae, copies of certificates, 5-page outline of a project idea) by 31st of December 2023 to Johannes Schick, Herrengarten 3, 57072 Siegen, Germany. Alternatively, you can also send your application in a single PDF file by e-mail (max. 5 MB) to johannes.schick[æt]uni-siegen.de. Please note that risks to confidentiality and unauthorized access by third parties cannot be ruled out when communicating by unencrypted e-mail.

Information about the University of Siegen can be found on our homepage: www.uni-siegen.de.

 

Download of the tender (PDF)

24 November 2023
DFG approves funding for the 3rd phase of the CRC (2024-2027)
The DFG has decided: Our CRC 1187 "Media of Cooperation" has been granted funding for another 4 years,...
DFG approves funding for the 3rd phase of the CRC (2024-2027)

The DFG has decided: Our CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation” has been granted funding for another 4 years, starting January 2024! We are delighted about the DFG’s decision and thank our excellent team of researchers for all the work put into the CRC, the application, the on-site review, the team building, and the fantastic research program. It was a collective effort!

We are also excited to welcome the new projects and PIs, and look forward to shaping more years of research on media of cooperation together, including a future focus on sensory media, artificial intelligence, and sensory praxeology. 

Let’s continue the collective work on media of cooperation!

Click here for the university’s press release (in German).

Click here for the DFG press release.

13 November 2023
New Working Paper No. 34 “Co-Teaching Post-digital Ethnography”
The new publication, "Co-Teaching Post-digital Ethnography" of our Working Paper Series (No. 34, Oct),...
New Working Paper No. 34 “Co-Teaching Post-digital Ethnography”

The new publication, “Co-Teaching Post-digital Ethnography” of our Working Paper Series (No. 34, Oct), is out now. The authors, Simone Pfeifer and Suzana Jovicic, deal with teaching complex theories and methodological approaches. They reflect on the co-teaching methods used in a master class on post-digital ethnographies. This work also aims to present implementation examples in teaching and co-teaching constellations using teaching exercises.

Simone Pfeifer is a social and cultural anthropologist focusing on visual anthropology, digital and media anthropology. She is a postdoctoral researcher in the Graduiertenkolleg, and her research focuses on Muslims’ everyday lives and digital media practices in Germany. Previously, she was a research assistant at the Institute of Anthropology and African Studies at JGU Mainz in the research project “Jihadism on the Internet: The shaping of images and videos, their appropriation and dissemination” and at the graduate college “Locating Media” at the University of Siegen.

Suzana Jovicic is a lecturer and ESPRIT (FWF) Fellow at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna. She specialises in digital, design and psychological anthropology, as well as in participatory and interdisciplinary research. She is a co-convenor of the European Network for Psychological Anthropology and a co-founder of the Digital Ethnography Initiative. Website: https://ksa.univie.ac.at/institut/mitarbeiterinnen/post-docs/jovicic-suzana.

The paper “Co-Teaching Post-digital Ethnography” is published as part of the Working Paper Series of the CRC 1187, which promotes inter- and transdisciplinary media research and provides an avenue for rapid publication and dissemination of ongoing research located at or associated with the CRC. The series aims to circulate in-progress research to the wider community beyond the CRC. All Working Papers are accessible via the website or can be ordered in print by email to: info[æt]sfb1187.uni-siegen.de.

25 October 2023
Out now: Special Issue on “Taming Digital Practices”
Whether it's a dog, a cat, or a smart speaker, all of them require some time to settle into households....
Out now: Special Issue on “Taming Digital Practices”

Whether it’s a dog, a cat, or a smart speaker, all of them require some time to settle into households. Modern mundane life is brimming with a variety of new data-driven technologies: digitally connected media such as vacuum robots, smart speakers, drones, and kitchen appliances are supposed to augment the practices they are involved in. As people integrate these technologies into their lives through a process of domestication, they adapt to them and are influenced by their presence. The thematic issue “Taming Digital Practices. On the Domestication of Data-Driven Technologies” of Digital Culture & Society, edited by Tim Hector, David Waldecker, Niklas Strüver, and Tanja Aal combines domestication research with empirical analysis of current digital and interconnected media, focusing on the process of taming with an emphasis on practices. In doing so, the issue brings together interdisciplinary perspectives, including media studies, sociology, anthropology, and human-computer interaction, among them a number of contributions from the CRC Media of Cooperation.

Edited by Tim Hector, David Waldecker, Niklas Strüver of the subproject B06 “Un-/desired Observation in Interaction: “Intelligent Personal Assistants” (IPA)“ (IPA)” and Tanja Aal of the subprojetc A05 “The Cooperative Creation of User Autonomy in the Context of the Ageing Society”.

12 October 2023
The CRC winter program 2023/24 is online
We welcome you back to our new semester and winter program. We already have quite an eventful year...
The CRC winter program 2023/24 is online

We welcome you back to our new semester and winter program. We already have quite an eventful year behind us with two MGK-colloquia, the annual conference, numerous retreats, rehearsals, a summer school and several guests in our Media Practice Theory series. For the winter term, we look forward to another very appealing and interesting program: The Research Forum features a couple of post-cocs and docs and their projects and a presentation of the GfM Special Issue on „Testing“. We will have two conferences in November and continue our successful Media Practice Theory Series with Jacob Gaboury and Michael Dieter in December. Also, Nina ter Laan, Carla Tiefenbacher and Martin Zillinger organize the hybrid lecture series “60 Minutes Anthropology: Sensing and Sense Making in the Mediterranean”, which will complement the program of the Research Forum. 

 
Check out our winter program!
04 October 2023
New Working Paper No. 33 “Unboxing Spain’s Colonial Past in the Rif”
In the latest publication "Unboxing Spain's Colonial Past in the Rif - Situating memory work and transborder...
New Working Paper No. 33 “Unboxing Spain’s Colonial Past in the Rif”

In the latest publication “Unboxing Spain’s Colonial Past in the Rif – Situating memory work and transborder publics in a Domestic Basement Archive in Madrid” of our Working Paper Series, the author Carla Tiefenbacher analyzes the archival practices of the inhabitants of the northern moroccan city of Al Hoceima. To fully understand the practices surrounding the operation and coercion of colonialism in Spain and northern Morocco, she explores ongoing trans-mediterranean and spanish memory activism by considering collecting practices with the help of the experiences of the inhabitants collected over several changes of power and the preserved objects.

As part of the subproject “Digital Publics and Social Transformations in the Maghreb,” Carla Tiefenbacher currently writes her master’s thesis on archival practices and memory infrastructures among the last Spanish colonizers in northern Morocco. She is currently completing the interdisciplinary course “Culture and Environment in Africa” at the University of Cologne. She holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University of Freiburg and is a trained mediator and grief counselor.

The paper “Unboxing Spain’s Colonial Past in the Rif – Situating memory work and transborder publics in a Domestic Basement Archive in Madrid” is published as part of the Working Paper Series of the CRC 1187, which promotes inter- and transdisciplinary media research and provides an avenue for rapid publication and dissemination of ongoing research located at or associated with the CRC. The purpose of the series is to circulate in-progress research to the wider research community beyond the CRC. All Working Papers are accessible via the website or can be ordered in print by sending an email to: info[æt]sfb1187.uni-siegen.de.

30 September 2023
A media-historical plea to the digital euro
Forget crypto! We need a new money for the European public. Sebastian Gießmann, principal investigator...
A media-historical plea to the digital euro

Forget crypto! We need a new money for the European public. Sebastian Gießmann, principal investigator of A01, makes a plea for the digital euro on the science pages of the FAZ:

 

 

27 September 2023
ZfM Special Issue on “Testing”, edited by the CRC, is out now
Carolin Gerlitz, Sprecherin des SFB und Teilprojektleiterin von A03, P03 und MGK, und Sebastian Gießmann,...
ZfM Special Issue on “Testing”, edited by the CRC, is out now

Carolin Gerlitz, Sprecherin des SFB und Teilprojektleiterin von A03, P03 und MGK, und Sebastian Gießmann, Teilprojektleiter von A01, zeichnen für das aktuelle Heft der Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft zum Thema TEST verantwortlich. Sie fragen, wie sich Medien und Tests wechselseitig konstituieren. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit erfahren dabei Politiken des Testens. Gerlitz und Gießmann schlagen vor, Tests als offene Situationen zu verstehen, in denen mit teils etablierten, teils sich erst während des Testens etablierenden Maßstäben soziotechnische Bewertungen erfolgen und Entscheidungen getroffen werden. Für einen medienkulturwissenschaftlichen Begriff des Tests gilt: In den Mikroentscheidungen des verteilten und verteilenden Testens steht das Soziale selbst auf der Probe. Die in diesem Heft versammelten Beiträge verdeutlichen: kein Test ohne Medien – kein Medium ohne Test.

Mit Beiträgen von David Bucheli, Gabriele Schabacher, Sophie Spallinger, Stefan Rieger, Daniela Holzer, Christoph Borbach, Noortje Marres und Philippe Sormani.

Das Heft erscheint im Open Acess.

Konzeption und Beiträge werden am Mittwoch, den 29. November im Rahmen des SFB Forschungsforums vorgestellt.

 
25 September 2023
Recap of our Mixing Methods Summer School 2023
We look happily back at this year's Mixing Methods Summer School to recap what our participants have...
Recap of our Mixing Methods Summer School 2023

We look happily back at this year’s Mixing Methods Summer School to recap what our participants have accomplished.

During the summer school “More Than Data: Positionality and Situatedness in Digital Research”, two groups contributed to the practical tracks: “Mapping the Misappropriation of Images of Transbodies” and “#letztegeneration meets #klimakleber: Mapping TikTok Imaginaries of Climate Activism and Climate Change Denial”. With facilitators Aikaterini Mniestri, Elena Pilipets, and Julia Bee, our contributors explored questions of positionality in the process of obtaining, visualizing, and interpreting online-ethnographic and visual platform data. The week of explorations opened with a welcome address by Carolin Gerlitz and a keynote by Gabriele Colombo titled ‘Unfolding data: lists, catalogues, supercuts, and other visual formats for digital research.’ In addition, a workshop by Jason Chao and Elena Pilipets, ‘Memespector: Web Detection and the Multi-Situatedness of the Digital Image,’ introduced participants to different methods of contextualizing image collections. 

The first group, ‘Mapping Misappropriation’, used a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the misappropriation of the images of trans content creators across the internet. The main results confirmed the initial hypothesis that the images published by trans content creators on their public accounts have been misappropriated to different ends. 

 

Figure 1: Mapping Misappropriation of Trans bodies: the image of Jamie Raines and its online contexts 

The project’s main results indicate the presence of these images on Russian adult sites and their resurgence in hate speech on platforms like 4chan. News articles with varying degrees of transphobia were collected and grouped based on their content. The project integrated web locations of these images into visualizations for better understanding. These findings emphasize the significance of this topic in new media and digital methods, calling for further examination of the misuse of images depicting minoritized bodies online.

The second group, ‘TikTok imaginaries’, explored a collection of 632 TikTok videos, focusing on the contemporary online imaginaries of climate activism and climate change denial. Using TikTok video metadata, participants worked with extracted video frames and associated information, including co-hashtags, stickers, and sounds. AI-assisted speech-to-text conversion and computer vision-generated image annotations were employed to locate different forms of embodiment in TikTok performances. By removing background, de-contextualized human and nonhuman bodies ranging from microphones and vehicles to hands, gloves, uniforms, and safety vests were then re-contextualized and collectively re-arranged in collages. 

Figure 2: From Decontextualization to Recontextualization: Re-imagining ‘bodies that stick’ in connection to the power dynamics they enact

Combining methods of ethical fabrication with feminist approaches, some social connections and power relations surfacing through data were re-imagined, while others remained intact in their linkages to one another and their TikTok-mediated contexts. Diverse positionalities, arising from TikTok performances and our research interventions, prompted us to critically assess the influence and ‘weight’ of affectively charged associations that stick onto activists’ bodies. In de-constructing the hateful rhetoric of climate change deniers, ethical considerations arise. These include both avoiding the normative reproduction of systemic violence and the necessity to support activists through inventive approaches that go beyond digital amplification. 

We thank everyone for their participation and contributions!