News
Convergence 30 (1) Special Issue on „Critical Technical Practice(s) in Digital Research“
Daniela van Geenen (University of Siegen)
Karin van Es (University Utrecht)
Jonathan Gray (King’s College London)
Our CRC-Member Daniela van Geenen (A03), together with Karin van Es and Jonathan Gray, edited the special issue “Critical Technical Practice(s) in Digital Research”, which has now been published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 30 (1).
Save the date: the editors will (soft) launch the issue at the CRC research forum on 10 July, 2 to 4 pm CEST with some short presentations. You can join the event either online or in Siegen! Contact Daniela van Geenen.
Links to the articles and the living literature collection (Zotero group) can be found here.
In this special issue, the authors turn to ideas of and approaches to critical technical practices (CTPs) as entry points to doing critique and doing things critically in digitally mediated cultures and societies. They explore the pluralisation of ‘critical technical practice’, starting from its early formulations in the context of AI research and development (Agre, 1997a, 1997b) to the many ways in which it has resonated and been taken up by different publications, projects, groups, and communities of practice, and what it has come to mean. Agre defined CTP as a situational, practical, and constructive way of working: ‘a technical practice for which critical reflection upon the practice is part of the practice itself’ (1997a: XII). Communities of practice in which the notion has been adopted, adapted, and put to use range from human–computer interaction (HCI) to media art and pedagogy, from science and technology studies (STS) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) to digital humanities, media studies and data studies. This special issue serves as an invitation to (re)consider what it means to use this notion drawing on a wider body of work, including beyond Agre. In this introduction, they review and discuss CTPs according to (1) Agre, (2) indexed research, and (3) contributors to this special issue. They conclude with some questions and considerations for those interested in working with this notion.
The issue is at the same time timely and timeless, featuring contributions by Tatjana Seitz (A01) & Sam Hind; Michael Dieter; Jean-Marie John-Mathews, Robin De Mourat, Donato Ricci and Maxime Crépel; Anders Koed Madsen; Winnie Soon and Pablo Velasco; Mathieu Jacomy and Anders Munk; Jessica Ogden, Edward Summers and Shawn Walker; Urszula Pawlicka-Deger; Simon Hirsbrunner, Michael Tebbe and Claudia Müller-Birn; Bernhard Rieder, Eric Borra and Stijn Peters; Carolin Gerlitz (A03 & Speaker of the CRC 1187), Fernando van der Vlist and Jason Chao; Daniel Chavez Heras; and Sabine Niederer and Natalia Sanchez Querubin.
Daniela van Geenen is a lecturer in Data Journalism and Visualization at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht and is also a Ph.D. candidate at the DFG CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation” and member of the project “A03 – Navigation in Online/Offline Spaces” at the University of Siegen Karin van Es is associate professor Media & Culture Studies and project lead Humanities at Data School at Utrecht University. Jonathan Gray is Reader in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London.
Convergence is an international peer-reviewed academic journal which was set up in 1995 to address the creative, social, political and pedagogical issues raised by the advent of new media technologies. As an international research journal, it provides a forum both for monitoring and exploring developments in the field and for encouraging, publishing and promoting vital innovative research. Adopting an inter-disciplinary approach and published six times a year, Convergence has developed this area into an entirely new research field.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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.
The new three part short series of publications »Defining Digitalities I – III« in the Working Paper Series by Thomas Haigh and Sebastian Gießmann asks “What’s Digital about Digits?” (No. 30, July 2023), “What’s Digital About Digital Communication?” (No. 31, July 2023) und “What’s Digital About Digital Media?” (No. 32, July 2023). In asking these questions the short series focuses on defining what digitality is by using a historical approach to the topic and analysing the reading and writing practices that lie within it.
The first paper »What’s Digital about Digits?«, written by Thomas Haigh, argues that digitality is not a feature of an object itself, but of the way that object is read (whether by human or by machine) as encoding symbols chosen from a finite set. Thomas Haigh then comes to the conclusion that digitality is constituted through reading practices.
No. 31 and No. 32 were written by Thomas Haigh and Sebastian Gießmann. In »What’s Digital About Digital Communication?« they continue to work on media and communication systems by looking at the historical broadening of the concept of digitality to include non-numerical systems of representation such as those used to encode text and pictures.
Furthermore, the third paper »What’s Digital About Digital Media?« discusses digitality as a feature of the practices used to read and write symbols from a medium, not a physical property of the medium itself and explores the limited interchangeability of representations between different encodings of the same symbols, connecting the purported immateriality of digitality to this actual fungibility of material representations.
Dr. Sebastian Gießmann is principal investigator of the CRC subproject A01 »Digital Network Technologies between Specialization and Generalization« and Reader in Media Theory at the University of Siegen. In 2023, he serves as visiting professor for cultural techniques and history of knowledge at Berlin’s Humboldt University. His book Connectivity of Things: Net- work Cultures Since 1832 is forthcoming in MIT Press’s Infrastructures series. Gießmann’s work intertwines practice theory (which he helped to establish within media studies), cultural techniques, Science and Technology Studies, and grounded histories of (digital) media. He is principal investigator of a major research project on the history of network infrastructures within Media of Cooperation.
Ph. D. Thomas Haigh is associated investigator of the same subproject a Professor of History and Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee and vis- iting Comenius Professor at Siegen University. Haigh has published extensively on many aspects of the history of computing and won several prizes for his articles. He is the primary author of A New History of Modern Computing (MIT, 2021) and ENIAC in Action (MIT, 2016) and the editor of Histories of Computing (Harvard 2011) and Exploring the Early Digital (Springer, 2019). Learn more at www.tomandmaria.com/tom.
The short series »Defining Digitalities« is a pre-publication of their upcoming book of the same title and 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
The new publication “‚Anything can happen on a smartphone…‘ – Mutual explorations of digitalization and social transformation in Morocco’s High Atlas through On/Offline Theatre Ethnography” by Nina ter Laan in collaboration with Marike Mahtat-Minnema discusses the use of (online) theatre as an ethnographic research tool. Drawing from an existing collaborative study, they discuss (digital) media use and social transformation in a Moroccan village situated in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Their project constitutes as a solution for the challenges imposed by Covid restrictions. The working paper describes the process, motivations, design, and outcomes of the project, as well as the controversies, opportunities, and struggles that arose during the theatre work.
Nina ter Laan is postdoctoral researcher within the research project B04 Digital Publics and Social Transformation in the Maghreb, working at the University of Cologne. Her research centers on aesthetic practices, religion, materiality, and heritage production, in conversation with politics of belonging, with a particular focus on Morocco. She is interested in the exploration of art forms as a subject and a method of research.
The paper »‚Anything can happen on a smartphone…‘« 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.
The new publication »Testing ‘AI’: Do We Have a Situation?« of the Working Paper Series (No. 28, June 2023) is based on the transcription of a recent conversation between the authors, Noortje Marres und Philippe Sormani, regarding current instances of the real-world testing of “AI” and the “situations” they have given rise to, or as the case may be, not. The conversation took place online, on the 25th of May 2022, as part of the Lecture Series “Testing Infrastructures”, organized by the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 1187 “Media of Cooperation” at the University of Siegen, Germany. This working paper is an elaborated version of this conversation.
In their conversation, Marres and Sormani discuss the social implications of AI based on three questions: First, they return to a classic critique that sociologists and anthropologists have levelled at AI, namely the claim that the ontology and epistemology underlying AI development is rationalist and individualist, and, as such, is marked by blind spots for the social, and in particular, situated or situational embedding of AI (Suchman, 1987, 2007; Star, 1989). Secondly, they delve into the issue of whether and how social studies of technology can account for AI testing in real-world settings in situational terms. And, thirdly, they ask the question of what does this tell us about possible tensions and alignments between different “definitions of the situation” assumed in social studies, engineering and computer science in relation to AI. Finally, they discuss the ramifications for their methodological commitment to “the situation” in the social study of AI.
Noortje Marres is Professor of Science, Technolpgy and Society at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodology at the University of Warwick and Guest Professor at Media of Cooperation Collaborative Research Centre at the University of Siegen. She published two monographs Material Participation (2012) and Digital Sociology (2017).
Philippe Sormani is Senior Researcher and Co-Director of the Science and Technology Studies Lab at the University of Lausanne. Drawing on and developing ethnomethodology, he has published on experimentation in and across different fields of activity, ranging from experimental physics (in Re- specifying Lab Ethnography, 2014) to artistic experiments (in Practicing Art/Science, 2019).
The paper »Testing ‘AI’: Do We Have a Situation?« 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.
Die neue Publikation der Working Paper Series (Nr. 27, April 2023) „Computational Correspondences – Die Software Korsakow als Katalysator für eine Korrespondenz mit digitaler Materialität in medienethnografischer Forschung“ von Franziska Weidle, Judith Schein, Astrid Vogelpohl und Tobias Leßner ist erschienen und befasst sich mit der Entstehung neuer Forschungspraktiken.
In einer Neubetrachtung des Forschungsprozesses werden nicht nur die Forschenden als aktive Partizipient:innen herausgestellt, sondern die digitale Materialität ihrer Forschungsinstrumente, ‑umgebungen und ‑gegenstände werden in dieser Publikation als ebenso aktive Teilnehmer im Vorgang betont. Die Autor:innen beschreiben ihre Methodik und Ergebnisse zu ihren jeweiligen Untersuchungsschwerpunkten.
Franziska Weidle ist visuelle Anthropologin, Film- und Medienmacherin sowie Bildungsreferentin und arbeitet als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin an der Universität Cottbus-Senftenberg. Judith Schein ist freischaffende Filmemacherin und Kulturanthropologin mit Schwerpunkt Visuelle Anthropologie an der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. Astrid Vogelpohl ist Projektmitarbeiterin im Teilprojekt B05 „Frühe Kindheit und Smartphone: Familiäre Interaktionsordnung, Lernprozesse und Kooperation“ (Leitung: Jutta Wiesemann) und ebenso wie Tobias Leßner als wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter:in am Department Erziehungswissenschaften der Universität Siegen tätig.
Die Publikation „Computational Correspondences – Die Software Korsakow als Katalysator für eine Korrespondenz mit digitaler Materialität in medienethnografischer Forschung“ 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 karina.kirsten[æt]uni-siegen.de bestellt werden.
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