Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

Die neue Publikation der Working Paper Serie (Nr. 24, Dezember 2022) „Mit Wittgenstein: Arbeiten Ein Methoden Manual“ von Birgit Griesecke und Werner Kogge bietet ein Methoden Manual, das in Form von 10 Einsätzen einen Zugang zur Methodologie in den mittleren Schriften und im Spätwerk Ludwig Wittgenstein eröffnet. Sowohl Hintergründe, Zitate im Kontext, als auch weiterreichende Fragen und Hinweise werden übersichtlich präsentiert. Dadurch wird eine erste Orientierung hinsichtlich der wesentlichen Eckpunkte einer praxeologisch orientierten Sprachphilosophie ermöglicht. Zentrale Theoreme wie grammatische Untersuchung, Beschreibung, Sprachspiel, Familienähnlichkeit werden vertiefend und in ihrem gedanklichen Zusammenhang dargestellt. In seiner überblickshaften Darstellung zielt dieses Manual auf ein theoretisches und praktisches Verständnis der Philosophie Wittgensteins als Arbeitsform und damit auf eine Erschließung dieser Philosophie als eine ebenso praktikable wie durchgreifende Vorgehensweise im Spektrum wissenschaftlich-kritischer Methodologien.

Das Methoden Manual wurde von den AutorInnen im Rahmen einer Kooperation mit dem Teilprojekt B05 „Frühe Kindheit und Smartphone. Familiäre Interaktionsordnung, Lernprozesse und Kooperation“ (Leitung: Prof. Dr. Jutta Wiesemann) angefertigt. Birgit Griesecke ist Japanologin und Philosophin und arbeitet zu ethnographischen Themen mit Schwerpunkt Japan sowie zur Philosophie Ludwig Wittgensteins. Sie studierte in Hamburg, Tokyo und Bochum. Neben Beschäftigungen am Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte sowie am Zentrum für Literatur-und Kulturforschung in Berlin und an der Universität Bonn führten sie Forschungsaufenthalte nach Wien und London. Werner Kogge (PD Dr. phil.) lehrt Philosophie an der Freien Universität Berlin und leitet die Forschungsstelle Téchne / Techniken: Formationen von Wissen Im Handeln. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte liegen im Feld von Methodologie, Wissenschaftstheorie, Politischer Theorie, Verfahrensgestaltung und Begriffsforschung. 2017 erschien bei Velbrück-Wissenschaft: Experimentelle Begriffsforschung. Philosophische Interventionen am Beispiel von Code, Information und Skript in der Molekularbiologie. Mit einer Abhandlung zu Wissenschaftstheorie nach Wittgenstein.

Die Publikation „Mit Wittgenstein Arbeiten: Ein Methoden Manual“ wird im Rahmen der Working Paper Series des SFB 1187 „Medien der Kooperation“ veröffentlicht. Die Working Paper Series 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.

‘Digital Twins’ are currently the most important drivers of the fourth industrial revolution. The technical products and processes that are becoming ever more complex are now developed and tested in the virtual sphere before they emerge in the ‘real’ world. Future artifacts and practices are first produced as software models and simulated as so-called digital twins. The paradigm of digital media technologies is therefore subject to fundamental change through the prevalence of digital twins in industry and research: the digital is no longer a real-time virtual representation of a real-world physical object: it is exactly the opposite and concurrently much more than that, allowing the analysis of future performances of objects without the physical presence of the objects. Digital twinning therefore promises not only the potential of making futures predictable through recognition and correlation of virtual and physical (Chun 2021), but the ability to do so without physical counterparts.

Whether or not the counterpart already exists in the real world or will only exist in the future is almost insignificant, as it’s simply a matter of engineering and marketing decisions. Digital twins make clear that the real world is just one possible realization of the primarily virtual world. At the same time, digital twins and other haunting ‘data doppelgangers’ allow overarching data exchange and cooperation. They are more than pure data, proving once more that so-called “raw data” does not exist (Bowker 2005; Gitelman 2013). Digital twins consist of technical and social models of acting objects, and integrate various embedded sensors related to vital areas of functionality that make things and processes sense-able (Gabrys 2019). Digital twins can therefore also include simulations and services, asking anew if there is anything worldly which may must remain “uncomputable” (Galloway 2021).

To date, theoretical concepts of digital twinning consist of three levels that are based on one another: first, a physical object or process; second, a vivid digital model of that object/process; and third, data streams between both entities: the physical and virtual world(s). As such, the theoretical concepts of digital twinning reference Harold Garfinkel’s research on mock-ups as models for representing and assessing social phenomena (Garfinkel 1943 [2019]). Cooperative data, running through production and operational chains as a digital thread, form the real and virtual world(s). Thus, they are the focus of our discussion on digital twins.

Datafication in the analogue era followed a different logic than do today’s processes, with all their entanglements and interdependencies with and within the ‘real’ world. Human bodies, system processes, and their data traces und virtual models are deeply intertwined in current postdigital – or rather, more-than-human (Lupton 2019) – media cultures. It is surely not a new idea that data and the technologies of its collection, storage, circulation, and evaluation are shaping how societies and individuals see themselves. But it is a novelty that processes of datafication within the context of digital twins and their future predictions and simulations of behavior – mostly systems behavior but also human purchasing and movement behaviors, with their political implications – are fundamentally changing the methods of planning production processes and products. Technologies of digital twinning ask once more how data practices affect and mold decision-making within institutions (Vertesi 2020).

Digital twinning is no longer restricted to single entities – like objects being studied – but allows for modeling complex chains of co-operations, thus making it a central driving force in the ongoing digital revolution. If the ‘data self’ is not a subordinate virtual correlate of actual human beings and processes, but is deeply interwoven and in interaction with the physical, then the same holds true for digital twins: they are not mere virtual re-presentations and simulations of actual physical processes and things, but, on the contrary, are constitutive for them – resulting in scenarios where they do not rely on physical models or have physical counterparts at all. This might fundamentally change the way that agency is distributed across physical and virtual actors: data models are becoming more and more decisive and more-than-human spaces like the “dataverse” and other “360°” immersive media (Stiegler 2021) make clear that neither the physical nor the virtual are separate or even stable categories, nor are the ‘physical’ and the ‘digital twin.’ Implementations of spaces in which individuals and (their) data twins collide, such as the metaverse or Second Life, are evermore a social reality.

Taking the digital twin as an analytic lens, we also try to understand aesthetics, politics, genders and economies of ‘digital doubles.’ These new symptoms of postdigital data cultures differ from previous motifs of doubles, e.g. literary doppelgangers as in the work of E. T. A. Hoffmann, among others. Selfies are emblematic of digital data cultures and their visual regime (Eckel et al. 2018), as are avatar images in avatar-based gaming (Klevjer 2022), since they are no mere pictorial representations but digital images of self-perception and self-modeling. They stand as digital doubles exemplary for the self in extended realities (XR), the self-embodiment in digital spheres, and the continuum between offline and online (Coleman 2011). Similar to digital twins, digital ‘doubles’ even without a physical ‘original’ can unfold influence, literally, as virtual influencers or actors such as Hatsune Miku demonstrate.

Media practices of doubling and storing the self might have predigital histories (Humphreys 2018). But only digital tracking applications can be regarded as real-time feedback loops that influence human behavior. This can be seen positively since it transforms the way humans self-optimize, e.g. their athletic behavior, as shows the quantified self-movement. But it can also be critically reflected from a political standpoint, since it evokes a shift from individuals to ‘dividuals’ and an interpretation of human beings as conglomerates of sensor technology, flesh, and data doubles within surveillant assemblages (Haggerty and Richard 2000).

To account for this complex technological situation and its social impacts, the planned conference will bring together researchers from different fields: engineering and social science, informatics and media studies. The aim is to understand concepts and technological practices of digital twins and ‘twinning’ that are not restricted to purposes of system and production monitoring, maintenance and simulation – that is, processes of digital engineering. We will expand its scope to include real-time interrelations of digital data acquisition and simulation, on the one hand, and the physical performance of humans, things, and systems, on the other.

Digital twins and doubles draw our attention to the central medial, technical, and social challenges posed by digitization. Yet, to date, only rudimentary research has been conducted into its cultural and social impact. The conference on “Digital Twins & Doubles: Data of Cooperation” aims to change this.

We are seeking abstracts (500 words) for submissions until January 31, 2023 (to be sent to info[æt]sfb1187.uni-siegen.de, subject: “Conference Digital Twins”), that might address – but are not limited to – one or more of the following topics:

• how is data agential (in digital twinning)?
• interrelations and interdependencies between physical and digital twins and doubles
• politics, (data) economies, and technologies of digital twinning and doubling
• boundaries in the modeling of twins
• (de)central places of twinning: where is it to be done, and by whom?
• twinning as labor: precarious work and/or precarious for workers?
• how do AR and VR contribute to twinning?
• histories of twinning: from science fiction, to NASA, to the public?
• future digital practices of twinning
• imaginaries and aesthetics of twinning and data doubles, potentials of real-time blueprints
• living in multi-sensored environments, smart building infrastructures, and digital cities
• case studies of digital threads: critical reflections on full product lifecycle traceability and live surveillance/monitoring
• gendering and aesthetics of avatars
• selfies and the practices of digital doubles
• challenges and difficulties of data governance, data rights, and data sustainability
• sensor ecologies and their impact on digital twinning
• media and social theories of digital twinning
• socio-cultural consequences of the fourth industrial revolution
• digital methods, ethnographic, and ethnomethodological approaches for further research on digital twinning
• applications for digital twins in the industrial and consumer metaverse

Submission of complete contributions up to January 31, 2023 are to be sent to info[æt]sfb1187.uni-siegen.de.

Venue: University of Siegen, July 17-19, 2023.

Annual Conference of the Collaborative Research Center (SFB 1187) “Media of Cooperation”

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 April 2023 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-career researchers. The duration of the scholarships is 6 to 9 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 and medicine 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 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 Johannes Schick (Tel.: +49(0)271 740-5181)

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 12th of February 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.

Carolin Gerlitz was elected as the new spokesperson for SFB 1187 “Media of Cooperation” back in October. She has been a professor of Digital Media and Methods at the University of Siegen since 2016. Previously, she held a tenured assistant professorship for New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam.

Her research focuses on critical data studies, platform and software studies, data practices and sensor data, among others, which she explores in her subprojects A03 Navigation in Online and Offline Media and P03 Media of Praxeology III: Digital Research Tools and Environments, which she leads. In addition, she leads the sub-project C01 Fabricating ‘the people’ Negotiating Claims of Representation in Social Media in Post-Gezi Turkey in CRC 1472 Transformations of the Popular.

As spokesperson, she now replaces Tristan Thielmann in his duties, who will act as deputy spokesperson from now on. We wish Carolin Gerlitz all the best for her new tasks.

How is the use of Smart Speakers negotiated situationally, embedded in interpersonal interactions, and (how) are aspects of data privacy, data processing and potential exploitation reflected by the users?

The new publication »The ‘Conditional Voice Recorder’: Data practices in the co-operative advancement and implementation of data-collection technology« in the Working Paper Series (No. 23, Sep 2022), co-authored by Tim Hector, Franziska Niersberger-Gueye, Franziska Petri and Christine Hrncal, focuses on the “Conditional Voice Recorder” (CVR). CVR is a technology, developed in Nottingham by Porcheron and colleagues (2018), which was brought to bear to create audio recordings of usage contexts. This includes not only the voice command itself, but also a few minutes before and after the smart speaker is addressed. Facing the methodological challenge of documenting voice data beyond mere “voice commands”, the paper reflects on this advancement and the implementation of the CVR – i.e. our own research practices – as data practices. On the one hand, it makes visible which (otherwise opaque) data were collected and processed during the advancement, how the usage of the CVR itself is inscribed in the data recorded with it, and which data practices were carried out in the evaluation. On the other hand, it documents the advancement and application of the CVR to enable other studies with it (or similar technologies).

The authors work in the subproject B06 »Un-/desired Observation in Interaction: “Intelligent Personal Assistants” (IPA)« of the Collaborative Research Center 1187 »Media of Cooperation«.

The paper »The ‘Conditional Voice Recorder’: Data practices in the co-operative advancement and implementation of data-collection technology « 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.

This winter term, we have two lecture series at the CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation” dealing both with the political dimensions of research.

The first lecture series addresses “Politics of Data – Politics of Semi-Autonomy”. Our invited guests will discuss concepts that critically address the ongoing crises of the digital age (e.g. information, climate, resources, discrimination), e.g. Aesthetics & Evidence, Critique and Imagineries, (Data) Governance and Activism, (Interactive/value-sensitive) Design and Decolonialism. Even though all of these concepts deserve a lecture series on their own, we chose to have for each of these topics one lecture in order to create a kaleidoscopic and interdisciplinary perspective on what critical practices and future “Politics of Data and Semi-Autonomy” can look like.

The lecture series “Politics of Data – Politics of Semi-Autonomy” takes place as a hybrid event Wednesday from 2 to 4 pm c.t.. You can join online by registering here. Lectures:

23|11|22 – Investigative Aesthetics with Matthew Fuller
7|12|22 – Sensing Machines with Chris Salter
18|1|23 – Politics of Data – Politics of Semi-Autonomy with Orit Halpern
31|1|23 – Hacking into Aesthetics and Politics of (AI-)Avatarization and algorithmic facialitiy with

In view of the current political situation, especially the war in Ukraine and the protest movement in Iran, the second lecture series “Research at Risk!” is an invitation to discuss the challenges of research in media, theater and cultural studies in crises and war regions beyond national and cultural boundaries. How can research, education and studies be carried out under hostile conditions and what influence do war, political oppression, diaspora and other crisis-related impacts have on the production of knowledge? We invited experts from various disciplinary and geo-political situations/positions to discuss research practices in war and crises as well as on scientific/activist work on war and crises.

This lecture series is a continuation of an initiative from within German Media Studies to support scholars at risk affected by the ongoing Russian invasion on Ukraine and a cooperation between the CRC 1187 “Media of Cooperation”, the CRC 1472 “Trans­for­ma­ti­o­nen des Popu­lä­ren“ and the Media Studies department at the University of Siegen, the Graduiertenkolleg 2132 “Das Dokumentarische” and the Faculty for Philology at Ruhr University Bochum, and the European Media Studies at the University Flensburg. The lecture series is an online event. Guests are welcome to register via Mail ‘Send an E-mail’

Bereits vor Ausbruch der Covid19-Pandemie haben David Stark und Noortje Marres die fortwährende Ausweitung von Testverfahren als eine Signatur von test societies beschrieben. Sie konzentrierten sich dabei auf das wechselseitige Verhältnis von Test und Gesellschaft(en). Denn Tests finden nicht allein nur in Labor und Werkstatt, Büro oder Studio statt, sondern in sämtlichen Lebens- und Arbeitsbereichen. Doch in welchem Verhältnis stehen Medien und Tests – historisch, in der digitalen Gegenwart, politisch und methodologisch?

Wir schlagen vor, Tests als offene Situationen zu verstehen, in denen mittels etablierter oder sich erst während des Testens etablierender Maßstäbe soziotechnisch Entscheidungen ermöglicht werden. Mit Tests wird das Neue und Unerwartbare nicht nur erkundet, sondern medial registriert, identifiziert und klassifiziert. Auf diese Art und Weise werden situierte Daten als Fakten generiert, die wiederum Entscheidungen ermöglichen. Dadurch transformiert der Test das Getestete und seine Umgebung. Für einen medienkulturwissenschaftlichen Begriff des Tests gilt: In den Mikroentscheidungen des verteilten und verteilenden Testens steht das Soziale selbst auf der Probe. Der annoncierte Themenschwerpunkt von Heft 29 untersucht deshalb medienhistorische wie gegenwärtige Praktiken und Techniken von Testgesellschaften und fragt, wie sich Medien und Tests wechselseitig konstituieren – ob als Sinnestest, Testbild oder Testton, Probedruck, Testvorführung, Pilotfilm, Betaversion, Test technischer Objekte und Abläufe, forensische Analyse, Wissensprüfung oder biomedizinische Zertifizierung.

Besondere Aufmerksamkeit sollen die Politiken des Testens erfahren. Testgesellschaften können kontrollgesellschaftliche Elemente enthalten, doch die Politiken von Testsituationen entfalten sich auf unterschiedliche Weisen. Anstelle direkter Überwachung dominiert das permanente monitoring. Neben der Frage, wie mit Tests Entscheidungen getroffen und Zukünfte (un)möglich gemacht werden, sollen auch die beteiligten Akteur_innen und deren Handlungsmacht problematisiert werden. Wer verfügt einen Test? Wer hat Mitsprache an Kriterien und Bedingungen? Ist eine Testsituation für alle Beteiligten überhaupt als solche erkennbar? Gerade im Kontext digitaler Plattformmedien ist dies häufig nicht der Fall. Verfahren des datenbasierten Testens kennzeichnen technisierte und digitalisierte Lebenswelten – spielerische und situierte Praktiken, mit denen opake Medientechnologien angeeignet werden («unboxing», YouTube as Test Society), aber auch großflächige Tests, die vom Stresstest des Finanzsystems über die datenintensive Sozialforschung großer Plattformen und agile Entwicklungsstrategien (ehemals Perpetual Beta) bis zur allgegenwärtigen Einrichtung von Technologien maschinellen Lernens reichen. Man könnte von einer steten Ausweitung des soziotechnischen Testens sprechen, die auch Crashtests, experimentelle Smart Cities oder die Gesundheitsvorsorge umfasst.

Kein Medium ohne Test, kein Test ohne Medien. In datenintensiven Mensch-Maschine-Netzwerken wird fortwährend geprobt und getestet. Die wechselseitige Verfasstheit von Medien und Tests erzeugt dabei eigene Herausforderungen für medienwissenschaftliche Kritik und Methoden. Während der individualisierte Turing-Test als Mythos künstlicher Intelligenz weiter tradiert wird, werden mögliche kollektive Test- und Prüfverfahren verteilten maschinellen Lernens kontrovers diskutiert, etwa unter dem Stichwort der algorithmic accountability. Wie kann die Medienkulturwissenschaft ubiquitäres Testen in seinen verschiedenen Facetten empirisch nachverfolgen? Wie kann sie kritisch in entsprechende Debatten intervenieren? Und was bedeutet dies für medienwissenschaftliche Methoden?

Wir laden dazu ein, die Medien, Mediatoren und Situationen des Testens einer genauen Prüfung zu unterziehen. Besonders willkommen sind Beiträge, die die Medialität des Testens anhand konkreter Fälle untersuchen und sich deren Politiken zuwenden. Inwiefern sind Medien grundlegend für Testpraktiken und zeitlich begrenzte Test-Situationen? Inwiefern ist umgekehrt das Testen konstitutiver Bestandteil von Medien und deren Praktiken? Auf welchen biologischen, physikalischen, bürokratischen und sensorischen Test- und Prüfverfahren beruhen Medien? Wie schreiben sich die Medien und Mediatoren des Testens in Wahrnehmung, Sozialität, Geschlecht und Kulturtechniken ein? Ebenso interessiert uns, wie Institutionen und Plattformen, aber auch Situationen und Praktiken über die anhaltende Proliferation des Testens und seiner Datenpraktiken entscheiden. Wie lassen sich Testgesellschaften durch ihre öffentlichen Kontroversen – wer testet wen unter welchen Bedingungen – verstehen? Welche Testverfahren stehen im Widerstreit zueinander und gibt es alternative Testpraktiken und -kulturen? Wie lässt sich der Zusammenhang von Medien und Tests als politische Frage denken? Wie sähen demgegenüber die Konturen einer Poetik des Testens aus? Schließlich: Wie testet die Medienwissenschaft ihre Thesen?

Einreichung kompletter Beiträge bis zum 28. Februar 2023.
Stylesheet und Call unter www.zfmedienwissenschaft.de.

Ideen für mögliche Beiträge können sehr gern vor dem Einreichen der ausgearbeiteten Texte mit der Schwerpunktredaktion besprochen werden. E-Mail für inhaltliche Rückfragen: sebastian.giessmann[æt]uni-siegen.de, carolin.gerlitz[æt]uni-siegen.de.

Schwerpunktredaktion: Sebastian Gießmann, Carolin Gerlitz

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

Die neue Publikation der Working Paper Serie (Nr. 22, Juli 2022) „In den USA ist in alltäglichen Interaktionen ein stillschweigender Rassismus institutionalisiert. Und anderswo?“ von Anne Warfield Rawls und Waverly Duck setzt sich eingehend mit der Frage auseinander, wie Menschen in der Begegnung mit anderen kontinuierlich und unbewusst auf eine Reihe von Erwartungen zurückgreifen, die unser Handeln bestimmen und anleiten. Da diese Erwartungen und Voreinstellungen durch einen über Jahrhunderte gewachsenen systemischen Rassismus geprägt sind, sehen wir uns permanent dazu veranlasst, auf der Grundlage rassistischer Vorurteile zu agieren, die unser gesamtes Handeln beeinflussen können: von der Art, wir wir unsere Nachbarn begrüßen, bis hin etwa zur Frage, ob wir einen zweiten Blick auf einen bestimmten Lebenslauf werfen.

Das Working Paper ist eine Zusammenfassung des 2020 erschienen Buches Tacit Racism der Autor*innen und zugleich die deutsche Übersetzung ihres Auftaktbeitrags für die gleichnamige Debatte in der Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 2/2021. Bei dem „stillschweigenden Rassismus“, so die These der Autor*innen, handelt es sich um eine der sich am schnellsten ausbreitenden und gefährlichsten Bedrohungen für die Zukunft der Demokratie. Sie gehen davon aus, dass die US-amerikanische Entwicklung eines binären kategorialen Schemas, das sich an der strikten Opposition von Schwarz und Weiß orientiert, in gewisser Weise singulär ist, jedoch die US-amerikanische Praxis und Konstruktion von race in die ganze Welt exportiert wurde. Dadurch verschärfte sich auch in anderen Gesellschaften die tiefe Verankerung eines „stillschweigenden Rassismus“.

Anne Warfield Rawls ist Professorin für Soziologie an der Bentley University, Professorin für Sozioinformatik an der Universität Siegen und Direktorin des Garfinkel-Archivs. Sie leitet am SFB das Teilprojekts P01 „Medien der Praxelogie I: Die „Discovery Procedures“ der Science and Technology Studies“. Waverly Duck ist Stadtsoziologe und außerordentlicher Professor für Soziologie an der Universität von Pittsburgh.

Die Publikation „In den USA ist in alltäglichen Interaktionen ein stilschweigender Rassismus institutionalisiert. Und anderswo?“ wird im Rahmen der Working Paper Series des SFB 1187 „Medien der Kooperation“ veröffentlicht. Die Working Paper Series 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.

Networking, workshops and coaching sessions: As part of equal opportunities service in the CRC we host and offer a variety of formats ranging from networking events, coaching sessions and workshops to a comeback of our “Gender & Diversity Lunch”.

In the past winter, we invited Dr. Claudia Neusüß with a thought-provoking workshop on “Career Development and Negotiation Techniques”, which was the result of a valuable cooperation with the Equal Opportunities Office. Our PhD candidates became part of the supportive “Online Coworking Community” initiated by Dr. Anna Maria Beck and benefitted from an inspiring writing workshop conducted by [schreibzentrum.berlin]. Furthermore, we provided our female members individual coaching sessions on career development.

We started into the summer with a talk and discussion round with Dr. Iuditha Balint, director of the “Fritz-Hüser-Institut für Literatur und Kultur der Arbeitswelt”, which became the kick-off event for this summer’s “Gender & Diversity Lunch” series, formely known as “Gender Lunch”. In the following month we welcomed Jun.-Prof. Dr. Cécile Stehrenberger and are looking forward to our next guests, Prof. Dr. Julia Bee and Dr. Simone Pfeifer, who will share their experiences around the topics of gender equality, diversity as well as reconciling academia and family. The “Gender & Diversity Lunch” is a collaborative format with the CRC 1472 “Transformations of the Popular”. Joining forces, we seek to facilitate networking between CRC members and individuals from variuous fields with different biographical backgrounds.

In June, we were very happy to host the workshop “Critical Whitness – Perspectives and Positioning for Everyday University Life” facilitated by KARFI – Black Collective for Empowerment and Racism-Critical Education. The educational collective is an association of three Black women, offering workshops, lectures, and support on working critically on racism.

We are very much looking forward to learning and growing with, through and from one another.

You find more about our Equal Opportunities Services here.

“Memory under Fire” focuses on data and archiving practices in times of war and conflict. With Ukraine as a focal point, we explore the dynamics of information disorder in our platform saturated media sphere. Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine has brought innumerable deaths and destruction in the physical sphere, and Russia’s aggression also continues in the digital space, where countless pieces of disinformation, hate speech and propaganda are spread. Additionally, the digital media dynamics of this war have been put front and centre: some call it ‘the first TikTok war’, others argue that Volodimir Zelenskiy and his country invented new ways to fight on the digital battlefield. Russia’s invasion and the ensuing ongoing war highlights both digital warfare and the many data practices that participate in, critique, document, and archive this war.

This current situation sheds light on the need to document and archive war experiences and war crimes for future researchers and generations. This is particularly relevant for both countering disinformation practices and preserving data and access to it digitally, when physical archival infrastructures are being destroyed.

For our event series, we host speakers from the fields of academia and praxis (e.g. Center for Urban History in Lviv, Bellingcat, Mnemonic, University of Amsterdam, Simon Fraser University, Underdog the Unlawyers and other institutions and fields of praxis) to discuss how this war is influenced by and changing our digital media sphere.

The first event “Archiving in Times of Crisis: Academic Perspectives” on May 23^th explored data archiving and creative resistance practices in Ukraine and its diaspora featuring Taras Nazaruk from the Center for Urban History in Lviv and Kateryna Iakovlenko from the Institute of Human Sciences in Vienna.

The second event “Archiving in Times of Crisis: Practitioners’ Perspectives” on June 13^th  focuses on archiving war and human rights violations from the critical data practice perspectives in the fields of journalism and NGOs. We will host Charlotte Godart, investigator and lead of the Global Authentication Project at Bellingcat, Dia Kayyali, Associate Director of Advocacy at Mnemonic, and Olga Lubiv, Analyst at Underdog the Unlawyers, Kyiv, Ukraine.

The third event „Russian Disinformation“ on June 27^th will present research perspectives from Ukrainian scholars and practitioners on Russian disinformation practices and their implications. We will welcome as guests: Karyna Lazaruk, Visual Communication Specialist and Media Activist, Institute of Mass Information, Ukraine, and Marc Tuters, Assistant Professor, University of Amsterdam, Svitlana Matviyenko, Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University and Oleksiy Radynski, Filmmaker and Writer.

We invite the public to participate in the series of events by registering via migle.bareikyte[æt]uni-siegen.de or yarden.skop[æt]uni-siegen.de for a Zoom link.

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