News
Digital mit allen Sinnen – Ein Recht auf digitale Teilhabe für Kinder
Anlässlich des Weltkindertags betont das Projektteam von B05 “(Frühe) Kindheit und Smartphone. Familiäre Interaktionsordnung, Lernprozesse und Kooperation”:
Wahrnehmung ist nicht passiv! Vielmehr ist sie aktives Tun. Deshalb sprechen wir von Sinnespraktiken, wenn wir beispielsweise von Hören, Sehen, Berühren, Riechen, oder der Wahrnehmung des eigenen Körpers im Raum sprechen. Im Zeitalter der Smartphones verkümmern die Sinne, so eine weit verbreitete Annahme. Aber ist das wirklich so, oder verändern sich die Sinnespraktiken lediglich? Um dies herauszufinden haben wir mit einer Gruppe von 9 Kindern im KiTa- und Grundschulalter einen Workshop durchgeführt, in dem die Kinder eine Sinnesreise über den Campus in Form einer digitalen Schnitzeljagd gestaltet haben. Unsere Beobachtungen zeigen: egal ob analog oder digital, Kinder erforschen ihre Umgebung mit allen Sinnen, auf das wie kommt es an!
Ein Klick, große Folgen: Wer entscheidet, was ein Like bedeutet?
Sebastian Gießmann (Universität Siegen) und Johannes Paßmann (Ruhr-Universität Bochum) heute Abend zu Gast in der DLF-Sendung “Systemfragen”
Der Beitrag fragt nach den Folgen von Likes auf Social Media.
Zur Folge
Zurücktreten wegen eines Likes auf Social Media: Diese Diskussion wurde etwa im Fall der Präsidentin der TU Berlin, Geraldine Rauch, geführt. Aber meint ein Daumen nach oben immer Zustimmung? Und wer entscheidet, was ein Like oder Emoji bedeutet?
Zu den Forschenden
“How Fact-Checkers are Becoming Machine Learners: A Case of Meta’s Third Party Programme”
Yarden Skop (University of Siegen) and Anna Schjøtt Hansen (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
The paper of our CRC 1187 member Yarden Skop is honored as best student paper at the 2024 conference of the Association of Internet Researchers. The article will be published in the proceedings of the conference and will be available online on October 30th, 2024.
Hoa Mai Trần was invited as an expert on the topic of digital media in early education to a radio interview with WDR 5. The radio report “Digital media in nurseries: yes or no?” (author Corina Wegler) is about the municipal family centre ‘Krümelkiste’ in Arnsberg-Hüsten in North Rhine-Westphalia, which specialises in the use of digital media. The article highlights opportunities and limitations for early digital education and points to the current relevance of dealing with the realities of children and families in an increasingly digitalised world.
Hoa Mai Trần is a researcher in the CRC project (B05) “(Early) Childhood and Smartphone. Family Interaction Order, Learning Processes and Cooperation” and researches children’s digital gaming practices.
The radio feature is available until 28 May 2025 in the WDR Mediathek. It is only available in German.
Carolin Gerlitz is a full member of the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz
At its last meeting, the Academy of Sciences and Literature in Mainz elected media science Professor Carolin Gerlitz from the University of Siegen as a full member.
Carolin Gerlitz holds the chair of „Digital Media and Methods“ the University of Siegen and is also the spokesperson for our Collaborative Research Center 1187 “Media of Cooperation”. She is principal investigator of the project A03 – Navigation in Online/Offline Spaces. Gerlitz is co-founder of the “Center for Digital Methodologies in Media, Language and Research” and a long-standing member of the Digital Methods Initiative and the Public Data Labs.
Gerlitz studied social and science communication in Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts) and gender, media and culture at Goldsmiths College, University of London, where she completed her Doctorate in Sociology. She then worked in London and Amsterdam before taking up a professorship at the University of Siegen in 2016. Gerlitz focuses on digital media technologies and methods as well as software and platform studies.
About the Academy of Sciences and Literature
The Academy of Sciences and Literature is a trans-regional association of personalities from the fields of science, literature and music. It serves to cultivate the sciences, literature and music and in this way contributes to the preservation and promotion of cultural heritage. The academy is a place of dialog that focuses on interdisciplinary exchange. The Academy in Mainz currently supervises 37 research projects from all disciplines with a focus on long-term basic research.
The members of the Academy are divided into three classes (Mathematics and Natural Sciences Class, Literature and Music Class, Humanities and Social Sciences Class). Carolin Gerlitz is a member of the humanities and social sciences class.
In the article “The first app: a brief history of the credit card” on ZEVEDI eFin & Demokratie blog, Dr. Sebastian Gießmann traces the development of the credit card as a central medium of consumer society. Starting from its beginnings in the early 20th century as a charge plate, which was particularly widespread in the USA, the transformation of the credit card into a global payment method is described, which embodies both socio-economic prestige and technological innovation.
Sebastian Gießmann shows the developments in media technology and society that have made the credit card an indispensable part of modern capitalism and how the physical credit card has been continuously adapted to the requirements of an increasingly digitalized world – despite and also because of the rapid development of mobile payment services and app-based financial technologies.
➞ Full Article (only available in German)
„Verteilte Zurechenbarkeit. Die Bearbeitung von Störungen im Öffentlichen Verkehr“
Tobias Röhl
Campus, 2022
Tobias Röhl was honored for his habilitation thesis written at the CRC ( project A04) “Verteilte Zurechenbarkeit. Die Bearbeitung von Störungen im Öffentlichen Verkehr” (Campus, 2022) with the Research Prize Ethnography of the Section Sociology of Knowledge of the GSA (German Sociological Association). The award ceremony took place on June 21, 2024 at the 9th Fieldwork Days at TU Dortmund University. The awarded work examines complex disruption management in public transport and explores the question of how accountability is mediated in situations of disruption and is distributed between different actors – from drivers to the administration. Röhl shows that accountability in the event of disruptions cannot be reduced to individuals, but rather arises from the interaction of different actors and technical infrastructures. This “distributed accountability” is the result of a dynamic process in which roles and responsibilities are fluid and constantly renegotiated. The innovative organizational ethnographic study provides valuable insights into the interplay of technology and organization and provides starting points for a well-founded critique of public transport.
Disruptions to public transport are stressful. But where do you complain when the train breaks down? To the staff on site or directly to the company? An ethnographic look at the disruption management of public transport companies shows: Neither strategy is helpful on its own. Drawing on research on accountability and technical infrastructures, the organizational ethnographic study traces how questions of responsibility are technically mediated and shifted back and forth between different actors. This “distributed accountability” cannot be localized in single individuals, but can be found in the interplay of different actors, in the processes and practices of disruption management.
A detailed review of Tobias Röhl’s habilitation thesis „Verteilte Zurechenbarkeit. Die Bearbeitung von Störungen im Öffentlichen Verkehr“ by Hendrik Vollmer was published in 2024 in Soziologische Revue 47 (3): 377-380.
➞ See the review (German only)
About the research prize
In 2024, the Sociology of Knowledge Section of the German Sociological Association awarded the fifth “Ethnography Research Prize” for innovative and outstanding work in the field of ethnographic social research. The prize was endowed with 1,500 euros and awarded during the “Fieldwork Days”, which are usually held every two years. The 9th Fieldwork Days took place for the first time at TU Dortmund University in June 2024.
The “Research Prize Ethnography” is awarded to scientific publications (monographs or essays in German or English) that have been published in the three calendar years preceding the award ceremony. The prizewinner is selected by a jury consisting of five members of the Sociology of Knowledge Section of the German Sociological Association.
➞More about the research prize (German only)
From 2016 to 2020, Tobias Röhl was a researcher in the project A04 – Normal Interruptions of Service. Structure and Change of Public Infrastructures“ at the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 „Media of Cooperation“. Since 2021 he is Professor of Digital Learning and Teaching at the Zurich University of Teacher Education and focuses on the digital transformation of school education. After studying sociology, media studies and linguistics at the University of Konstanz and Trinity College Dublin, he completed his doctorate at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Mainz in 2012 with a thesis on the significance of media and artifacts in the classroom. His habilitation (venia legendi: sociology), accepted at the University of Siegen in 2021, deals with the dynamics of attributability in public transport disruption management. Röhl is currently researching the digital transformation of school education with a particular focus on pedagogical professionalism in the context of artificial intelligence.
The German Sociological Association (GSA) is a non-profit organization whose main objectives are to discuss sociological problems, to promote scientific communication among its members and to contribute to the dissemination and deepening of sociological knowledge. The GSA participates in the clarification of technical and academic issues in sociology and maintains relations with sociology abroad. The GSA is the association of academically qualified sociologists in Germany. It currently has around 3,500 members. Around four-fifths of all sociologists in Germany with a doctorate belong to it. Membership of the association is open to all persons who have proven themselves academically through their studies, research, teaching or publications in the field of sociology.
“En/Countering Tracking: Resisting spatiotemporal media operations in computational culture”
The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2024.
Countering tracking has become a key form of resisting the logics of computational culture. Subversive encounters have emerged in recent years as counterpoints to the hegemonic logics of web infrastructures (Christl and Spiekermann 2016), platform labor (Heiland 2021) and racial capitalism (Russell and De Souza 2023). These attempts to counter tracking take forms that range from investigative visualizations (Fuller and Weizman 2021) or provoking glitches in tracking infrastructures (Leszczynski and Elwood 2022) to uncovering web-based tracking (Sharelab 2015), building counter-infrastructures for labor resistance (Qadri and D’Ignazio 2022), or using sensors and satellite images for critical investigations (Ballinger 2023; Boyd et al. 2018).
Countering tracking becomes a resistant media operation itself, disentangling hegemonic spatiotemporal regimes and their socio-political forces. These forms of countering tracking challenge existing theoretical approaches to the critical analysis of tracking and open up new perspectives on subversion and resistance in computational culture. How is countering tracking by means of tracking possible in different contexts and in relation to software, infrastructures and aesthetics?
We invite critical encounters through and of tracking, enabling new perspectives on computational infrastructures, software, (non-)human aesthetics and operative interactions, by means of theoretical reflections, critical making or activism. We aim at gathering submissions that 1) render existing tracking operations perceivable; 2) disrupt tracking infrastructures; or 3) operationalize tracking itself for resistance. The special issue invites theoretical, conceptual and performative approaches from fields such as media studies, visual studies, artistic research, sociology and critical geography to address the question of how tracking becomes a repressive, subversive or activistic media operation.
Topics and projects might include:
- Inventive methods that repurpose tracking infrastructures, sensors, software and data to research computational culture
- Detailed empirical and critical studies exploring the relations of en/countering tracking in computational culture
- En/countering tracking in labor resistance and platform capitalisms
- Critical theoretical conceptualization of tracking or countering for the study of computational culture
- Critical explorations of the chronopolitics, timescapes and spatiotemporal regimes of tracking
- Activist media, countersurveillance, tactical media, decolonial, (glitch) feminist and resistant epistemologies of tracking
- En/countering relations between political economy, racialized capitalism and tracking
- Visual cultures, (in-)visualities and aesthetics of en/countering tracking
- En/countering tracking in media art and artistic activism
Schedule:
750-word abstracts should be emailed to en_countering_tracking@uni-bonn.de by September 15, 2024. Abstracts will be reviewed by the special issue editors and the Computational Culture editorial board.
Any queries can be addressed to the special issue editors at: en_countering_tracking@uni-bonn.de
Official call for contributions | Call for contributions PDF
“The Datafied Web”:
6th RESAW Conference (5-6 June 2025, Siegen University)
The deadline for submissions is 15 October 2024.
Do you remember the beginnings of early metrics in the 90s, the birth of web counters, those digital pioneers that marked and started to quantify the pulse of online activity, the novelty of seeing website visits measured in real-time, eye-catching graphics becoming the currency of online attention, and the early days of companies like Webtrends, Urchin and DoubleClick?
We invite scholars, researchers, web archivists to contribute to the 6th RESAW conference on the topic of “The Datafied Web”, through a historical lens. We would like to delve into the historical roots, trends, and trajectories that shaped the data-driven paradigm in web development and to examine the genealogies of the datafied and metrified web. Historical studies of trajectories towards a databased web and the emergence of platform-driven mobile ecosystems are very welcome, as well as case studies for instance related to the development of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and the evolution of data-sharing practices. Uncovering the early forms of analytics software, their origins, and the role they played in shaping the web landscape, and examining the historical context, aesthetics and role of web counters, analytics tools, mobile sensing and other metrics may also help us deepen our understanding of online interactions, past publics and audiences, and their (uneasy) trajectories. “The datafied web” also raises questions related to methods and (web) archives allowing to research this evolution: what are for instance the challenges and methodologies involved in archiving the metrified and increasingly mobile web, including the back-end infrastructure?
This theme also invites us to trace the historical trajectory of data surveillance and the evolution of data capturing practices on the web. Complementary are issues related to the historical development of tracking mechanisms, cookies, and the creation of digital footprints, as well as the evolution of companies relying on metrics, and the development of financialized web spaces and their implications. By investigating historical controversies and debates surrounding the increasing datafication of the web and uncovering historical instances of innovative data use or resistance practices against the datafication of the web, this conference also aims at reconstructing vivid and key debates that are transversal to the history of the web. How did the datafied web provide for the sensory media environments that we are now living in?
Finally, we wish to discuss innovative research methodologies for uncovering the historical dimensions of the datafied and metrified web, as well as methods that are approaching web archives as data (from an archiving and research perspective) and explore them through distant reading, metadata, seed lists, and other methods. Plus, we want to encourage everyone to think about datafication as a practice of sensing and sense-making that creates, sustains, and undermines media environments.
Theme scope and conference topics of the RESAW Conference
We encourage submissions addressing the conference theme ‘Histories of the Datafied Web’ through the following themes:
Infrastructures
- histories and genealogies of the datafied and metrified web, including its platformization within capitalism(s)
- aesthetics and design of the early metrified web
- the rise of data surveillance and data capture as an industry
- histories of APIs, data-sharing, and advertising technologies
- the rise of web counters, web analytics, and other web metrics
- histories of trackers, cookies, digital footprints, etc.
Publics
- methods and approaches towards audience of the past web
- historical controversies surrounding the datafication and platformization of the web
- histories of uses of data or practices of resistance to datafication and platform economies
- the rise of the financialization of the web, and its political economy
- histories of automation, virality, and popular practices on the web
Archives
- archiving the metrified web and back-end infrastructure of the web
- methodologies for writing histories of the datafied and metrified web
- web archives as data (archiving and documentation, distant reading, use of metadata, seed lists…)
- web archiving data practices and challenges
After the conference, the organizers will invite relevant contributors to participate in a special issue of Internet Histories related to the topic “The Datafied Web”.
Submissions that explore other aspects both within and outside of the general conference theme, are also welcome.
Submissions for the RESAW Conference
The deadline for submissions is 15 October 2024.
Submissions are welcome from all fields and disciplines, and we would particularly encourage postgraduate students and early career researchers to participate. We also encourage contributions that highlight non-Western and non-hegemonic developments. Contributions on practical challenges of web archiving in current moments of crisis are also very welcome.
Possible formats
- Individual papers of 15 minutes (500-word abstract).
- Panel sessions consisting of three individual papers of 15 minutes, introduced by a chair (500-word abstract for each paper, a brief 300-word description of the purpose of the panel).
- Other unconventional proposals like sessions of lightning talks, roundtables, etc., are welcome (300-word abstract).
- A session “My PhD in 5 Minutes” is foreseen (please apply by providing a 300-word abstract).
Acceptance of submissions is based on double-blind peer review.
Possible formats for the pre-conference day
- Submissions related to web archives are welcome from all fields and disciplines, and we would particularly encourage workshops related to tools, hands-on, as well as training sessions and demos.
- A whole pre-conference (500-word abstract)
- Workshops, demos and other formats related to web archives practices, methods, tools, demos (500-word abstract, specifying the expected duration)
Submissions
The deadline for submissions (including the pre-conference day) is 15th October 2024.
To submit a proposal :
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=resaw2025
Timetable
- 15 October 2024: Deadline for submissions
- 15 December 2024: Notifications of acceptance
- 25 January 2025: Programme
- March 2025: Registrations open (fees: 90 euros for advanced scholars, 50 euros for PhD students)
- 4 June 2025: Pre-conferences and demos
- 5-6 June 2025: Conference at Siegen University
The RESAW conference is organized by the CRC 1187 Media of Cooperation in collaboration with the RESAW Conference Committee
The conference is funded in part, by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) – Projektnummer 262.513.311 – SFB 1187 Medien der Kooperation and in part by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR), [INTER/DFG/23/17960744/DIGMEDIA].
The CRC 1187 offered visitors of all ages exciting insights into the everyday world of digital media and the opportunity to reflect on their own digital everyday life with an interactive stand at the “Open University”, hosted by the University of Siegen on June 8.
(© Astrid Vogelpohl 2024, TP B05)
On Saturday, June 8, 2024, the Schlossplatz of the Lower Castle in Siegen was transformed into a lively research laboratory. As part of the annual “Open University”, more than 50 stands and hands-on exhibits offered insights into various aspects of university life. The DFG Collaborative Research Center 1187 Media of Cooperation also presented a fascinating insight into our digital present. Visitors of all ages explored the CRC stand to share their own experiences with smart devices and learn more about the research investigating our digital and cooperative lives.
The centrepiece of the CRC stand was a 12m long tent wall, which was transformed into a colourful map of our digitalized world over the course of the day. Visitors used sticky notes to mark where and how they use smart devices in their everyday lives on an illustrated map of the city and their homes. From children talking about tablets in kindergarten, to students presenting their favorite apps, to pensioners sharing their experiences with digital assistance applications – the diversity of contributions reflected the ubiquity of digital technologies in our lives. CRC researchers used this opportunity to talk to visitors and gain new perspectives on their work.
The CRC 1187 stand was well received, highlighting the growing public interest in research into our digitalized society. The research centre has been studying digital, data-intensive media since 2016. The researchers are investigating how digital technologies shape our everyday lives and how people shape and use them together. The CRC’s work currently focuses on sensor technologies and artificial intelligence and the question of what influence these have on our daily lives and work. At events such as the “Open University”, the CRC aims to make its research relevant to everyday life in direct exchange with the public and at the same time raise awareness of the importance of digital media in our society.
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