SFB follows the nationwide initiative

Numerous universities and research institutions jointly announced that they will cease their activities on Platform X. The University of Siegen participates in the initiative. The SFB also follows the call and freezes its account on Platform X.

➞ Press release of the University of Siegen (available only in German)

➞ Joint press release of 63 universities and research institutions (available only in German)

The CRC continues posting on its other channels. Follow us!

Sorry, this entry is only available in Deutsch.

Wie gestalten wir den digitalen Euro als neues Medium der Kooperation?

Mit Sebastian Gießmann (Universität Siegen. SFB 1187) und Petra Gehring (TU Darmstadt)

Sebastian Gießmann und Petra Gehring diskutieren am auf der diesjährigen re:publica über den digitalen Euro, seine Zukunft und Kontroversen. Das re:publica Festival widmet sich Themen der digitalen Gesellschaft.

→ zum re:publica Programm

Über den Beitrag

2025 wird ein entscheidendes Jahr für den digitalen Euro. Die Europäische Zentralbank steckt mitten in der Vorbereitungsphase für diese neue Form des Bargelds. Währenddessen stockt der nötige politische Prozess in Brüssel. Dabei ist das Projekt immer noch vielen Bürger:innen unbekannt: Im Juni 2024 wussten 59 Prozent der Deutschen nichts über die digitale Zentralbankwährung. Und wer schon davon gehört hat, vermutet vieles – angefangen bei der (keinesfalls geplanten) Abschaffung von Schein und Münze, befürchteter finanzieller Überwachung bis zur Einführung einer europäischen Kryptowährung.

Wenn wir ein neues Geld der europäischen Öffentlichkeit bis 2028 realisieren wollen, braucht es deshalb vor allem: mehr zivilgesellschaftliche Aufmerksamkeit für die digitale Zentralbankwährung, mehr und genaueres Wissen, mehr Deliberation und zivilisierten Streit, mehr Kooperation, kollektives Vorstellungsvermögen und politischen Willen. Die Philosophin Petra Gehring und der Medientheoretiker Sebastian Gießmann debattieren mit Euch, wie wir den digitalen Euro unter den aktuellen Bedingungen für alle Generationen gestalten können, und müssen.

Sebastian Gießmann und Petra Gehring diskutieren über den digitalen Euro, seine Zukunft, seine Kontroversen, seine politische Philosophie, Medientheorie und Ökonomie. Alle Generationen brauchen digital cash. Aber wie gestalten wir als europäische Zivilgesellschaft ein neues Medium der Kooperation?

Die Session „Das neue Geld der europäischen Öffentlichkeit: Wie gestalten wir den digitalen Euro?“ findet am 27. Mai statt. Weitere Details hier →

Über die re:publica

Die re:publica ist ein Festival für die digitale Gesellschaft und die größte Konferenz ihrer Art in Europa. Die Teilnehmer*innen der re:publica bilden einen Querschnitt der (digitalen) Gesellschaft. Zu ihnen gehören Vertreter*innen aus Wissenschaft, Politik, Unternehmen, Hackerkulturen, NGOs, Medien und Marketing sowie Blogger*innen, Aktivist*innen, Künstler*innen und Social Media-Expert*innen. Die re:publica 25 fand vom 26.-28. Mai 2025 in Berlin statt. Sie steht unter dem Motto “Generation XYZ “.

Die aktive Beteiligung der Community – initiiert durch den dem Festival vorausgehenden “Call for Participation” – macht die re:publica zu diesem einzigartigen Event. Jede*r Interessierte reicht spannende Themen, Ideen oder Projekte ein, die damit selbst Teil des Programms werden können. Unter anderem dadurch erreicht die re:publica eine hohe Themendiversität und außergewöhnliche Vernetzungsmöglichkeiten. Über 50 Prozent der re:publica-Sprecher*innen sind weiblich. Damit ist die re:publica seit langem Vorreiter und wegweisend in der Debatte rund um die Themen “Gender Balance” und “Diversity” im Allgemeinen.

Im Jahr 2007 von Tanja Haeusler, Andreas Gebhard, Markus Beckedahl und Johnny Haeusler gegründet, engagieren sich die Gesellschafter*innen der republica GmbH seit über einem Jahrzehnt in den Bereichen Netzpolitik, Digitalkultur und digitale Gesellschaft.

Über die Forschenden

Petra Gehring ist Professorin für Philosophie an der TU Darmstadt. Sie arbeitet zu einem breiten Spektrum von Themen, von der Geschichte der Metaphysik bis hin zur Technikforschung und zu den Methoden der Digital Humanities. Sie war u. a. Fellow am Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin und ist derzeit Vorsitzende des Rats für Informationsstrukturen der gemeinsamen Wissenschaftskonferenz von Bund und Ländern sowie Direktorin des Zentrums verantwortungsbewusste Digitalisierung.

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Stellenausschreibung:

SHK/WHB-Stelle im SFB-Teilprojekt A04

Für das Teilprojekt A04 „Normale Betriebsausfälle. Struktur und Wandel von Infrastrukturen im öffentlichen Dienst“ im Sonderforschungsbereich 1187 „Medien der Kooperation“ suchen wir eine studentische Hilfskraft (SHK) (m/w/d) oder eine wissenschaftliche Hilfskraft mit Bachelor-Abschluss (WHB) (m/w/d) zum 01. Juni zu folgenden Konditionen:

• 9 Wochenstunden
• Befristet für 16 Monate
• Beschäftigung auf Grundlage des Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetzes

Ihre Aufgaben:

• Erbringung wissenschaftlicher Hilfstätigkeiten
• Unterstützung bei der Forschung sowie bei der Planung von Tagungen und Workshops
• Literaturrecherche und -beschaffung
• Einpflegen bibliografischer Angaben
• Mitarbeit bei der Datenaufbereitung und -auswertung
• Pflege der Projektwebsite

Ihr Profil:

• Immatrikulation im Studiengang BA oder MA Sozialwissenschaften oder Medienwissenschaften mit sozialwissenschaftlichem Schwerpunkt
• Interesse an einer Tätigkeit im wissenschaftlichen Umfeld
• Sicherer Umgang/selbstständiges Arbeiten mit MS-Office
• Strukturiertes Arbeiten, Freude an Teamarbeit, Eigeninitiative und Verantwortungsbewusstsein

➔ vollständige Stellenausschreibung

Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Bewerbung bis zum 30.04.2025.

Weitere Infos zu dem Projekt erhalten Sie hier: https://www.mediacoop.uni-siegen.de/de/projekte/a04/

Ihre Ansprechperson:
Damaris Lehmann, M.A.
damaris.lehmann[æt]uni-siegen.de

A workshop report (February 4-7) 

In February 2025, the Mixing Methods Winter School at the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 brought together over thirty participants, including international researchers, students, and experts from various disciplines. The program combined hands-on experimentation with critical inquiry into AI-driven research methods. Throughout the Winter School, participants critically engaged with AI not just as a tool but as a collaborator, reflecting on its role in shaping the research process.

The week opened with a keynote by Jill Walker Rettberg from the University of Bergen, who introduced “Qualitative Methods for Analyzing Generative AI: Experiences with Machine Vision and AI Storytelling.” Her talk set the stage for discussions on how qualitative inquiry can reveal the underlying narratives and biases in AI-generated content.

Participants then engaged in two hands-on workshops designed to explore mixed techniques for probing and prompting AI models. Carlo de Gaetano (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences), Andrea Benedetti, and Riccardo Ventura (Density Design, Politecnico di Milano) led the workshop “Exploring TikTok Collections with Generative AI: Experiments in Using ChatGPT as a Visual Research Assistant,” examining how AI can assist in visual analysis of networked video content. Together with Elena Pilipets (University of Siegen) and Marloes Geboers (University of Amsterdam) participants then explored the semantic spaces and aesthetic neighborhoods of synthetic images generated by Grok during the workshop “Web Detection of Generative AI Content”.

After an introductory first day, the Winter School shifted its focus to two in-depth project tracks. The first project, “Fabricating the People: Probing AI Detection for Audio-Visual Content in Turkish TikTok,” explored how protesters and the manosphere engage with cases of gender-based violence on Turkish TikTok and how these videos can be studied using different AI methods. The second project, “Jail(break)ing: Synthetic Imaginaries of ‘Sensitive’ AI,” explored how AI models reframe sensitive topics through generative storytelling under platform-imposed restrictions.

The recaps of the projects are:

→ Fabricating the People

→ Synthetic Imaginaries 

Fabricating the People: Probing AI Detection for Audio-Visual Content in Turkish TikTok  

Facilitated by Sara Messelaar Hammerschmidt, Lena Teigeler, Carolin Gerlitz and Duygu Karatas (all University of Siegen)

The project explored video shorts from the Turkish manosphere – content centered on masculinity, gender dynamics, and “men’s rights” issues that often discuss dating, self-improvement, and family life. While this content is found on mainstream platforms and passes moderation, it still frequently veers into misogynistic or even violent rhetoric. Our project explored AI-assisted methods to make sense of large amounts of this contentious multimodal data. 

Rationale

Specifically, we set out to develop methods to map how video shorts may become a vehicle for the ambient amplification  of extremist content across platforms. We explored two approaches using off-the-shelf multimodal large language models (LLMs). The first sought to extend the researcher’s interpretation of how manosphere content addresses bodies, which are both performed and contested intensely across the issue space. We did this by implementing  few-shot labelling of audio transcriptions and textual descriptions of videos. The second method sought to interrogate the role of generative AI in (re)producing memes, genres, and ambience across video shorts. We achieved this by experimenting with zero-short descriptions of video frames to describe detected genres, formats and the possible use of AI in video production processes.

Methods and Data

We started with a period of “deep hanging out” in Turkish manosphere and redpill spaces on Tiktok, Youtube, and Instagram. We identified prominent accounts and crawled them to build a data sample of 3600 short videos from across the three platforms. Several analyses were  carried out before the Winter School. These included metadata scraping, video downloading, scene detection, scene collage creation. transcribing audio, and directing an LLM to generate video descriptions following Panofsky’s a three-step iconological method, which differentiates between pre-iconographic analysis (recognizing fundamental visual elements and forms), iconographic analysis (deciphering symbols and themes within their cultural and historical contexts), and iconological interpretation (revealing deeper meanings, ideologies, and underlying perspectives embedded in the image) (Panofsky, 1939).

Method one: Video shorts continue to grow in popularity and prominence across social media platforms, building out new gestural infrastructures (Zulli and Zulli, 2022) and proliferating ambient images (Cubitt et al., 2021). Qualitatively investigating this rich multimodal content at a scale that highlights the broader atmospheres and cultures  developed through algorithmic circulation is challenging. Multimodal LLMs have the potential to extend researcher’s ethnographic coding capacity to larger datasets and to account for more varied formats than ever before (Li and Abramson, 2023). We therefore investigate possibilities for using cutting-edge multimodal LLMs for qualitative coding of multimodal data as a methodology for qualitatively investigating ambience and amplification in video-short-driven algorithmic media.

We began with a qualitative ethnographic immersion in our dataset, watching the videos and developing a codebook that described how the videos related to our interest in how bodies were both performatively and discursively addressed. We applied our codebook manually to the textual data the LLM allowed us to produce out of the videos, i.e., not only the metadata, but also audio transcriptions and LLM-generated video Panofskian descriptions. After the codebook stabilized, we applied it to a random subset of 150 datapoints. We then developed a few-shot learning script that applied these labels to the entire dataset. We chose three examples to belong to a labelling “core” and then programmed a script to sample dynamically from the rest of our 150 datapoints to include as many further examples as could be accommodated by the context window limitation. We then prompted the LLM to apply our labels to the entire dataset. This let us explore extending the researcher’s qualitative insights to larger, multimodal data.

Method two: Automation technologies and generative AI play an increasingly prominent role in the creation of audio-visual social media content.  This ranges  from image or video generation, to AI voice-over production, to video editing, content cropping, platform optimization, and beyond (Anderson and Niu, 2025). Detecting these production methods, however, is challenging. Even state-of-the-art machine-learning struggles to analyze multimodal media (Bernabeu-Perez, Lopez-Cuena and Garcia-Gasulla, 2024). We set out to find qualitative alternatives for exploring the role of AI aesthetics in video short production. Therefore, we proceeded with a twofold approach, developed within an iterative process of prompt engineering: First, we asked the LLM to create a structured visual analysis of a social media video collage by evaluating its composition, camera techniques, editing style, mise-en-scène, text overlays, genre, and platform-specific features, summarizing key characteristics as a tag list. This initial prompt helped distinguish between different video formats and styles, identifying those that are particularly likely to incorporate automation or AI-driven edits. Second, we directly instructed the LLM to assess the likelihood that AI was used in the production of this video. In this way, we set out to explore “popular” AI’s role in both the creation and the interpretation of misogynistic video-shorts.

Research questions

• How can AI-based methods be used to extend ethnographic research into networked digital cultures?
• How can these methods help increase researcher sensitivity to phenomena that happen at network scale, for example, ambient amplification practices?
• Can AI identify and characterize synthetic content? How does AI see AI?
• As an approximation of that question, how does AI interpret and distinguish between different content genres and formats?

Key findings

Our work demonstrated the extent to which the internal cultural logic of the LLM cannot be separated from its output as a tool (Impett and Offert, 2022) – and therefore how LLMs, when used as tools, are inevitably also always reflexively the object of study. When designing processes for “co-creation” and collaboration with LLMs, the logic of the LLM repeatedly overpowered our own efforts to insert our intentions and directions into the process. This suggests that the most fruitful way to use out-of-the-box LLMs as an ethnographic research tool for the study of digital cultures is to lean into – and critically interrogate – its internal cultural logic instead of trying to bend it to our own. Obtaining results that reflect our intentions more closely will require more extensive technical methods, e.g., fine-tuning models and extensive many-shot prompting or alternative machine-learning approaches. 

By letting the LLM reveal its own internal logic, however, we anticipate being able to use LLMs as a way to highlight the machine-readable and  machine-reproducible qualities of the multimodal networked space itself (Her, 2024). The LLM’s internal logic can help foreground the fact that this media is also created by and for machines to consume, and reveal how generative LLMs applied to problematic cultural spaces interpret, (re)structure, (re)produce cultures of hate in “popular” spaces.

A comprehensive report is in progress.

Jail(break)ing: Synthetic Imaginaries of (sensitive) AI 

Facilitated by Elena Pilipets (University of Siegen) and Marloes Geboers (University of Amsterdam). Website design by Riccardo Ventura (Politecnico di Milano)

This project has explored how three generative AI models—X’s Grok-2, Open AI’s GPT4o, and Microsoft’s Copilot—reimagine controversial visual content (war, memes, art, protest, porn, absurdism) according to—or pushing against—the platforms’ content policy restrictions. To better understand each model’s response to sensitive prompts, we have developed a derivative approach: starting with images as inputs, we have co-created stories around them to guide the creation of new, story-based image outputs. In the process, we have employed iterative prompting that blends “jailbreaking”— eliciting responses the model would typically avoid—with “jailing,” or reinforcing platform-imposed constraints.

Project website (work-in-progress)

Previous research

Rationale

We propose the concept of ‘synthetic imaginaries’ to highlight the complex hierarchies of (in)visibility perpetuated by different generative AI models, while critically accounting for their tagging and visual storytelling techniques. To ‘synthesize’ is to assemble, collate, and compile, blending heterogeneous components—such as the data that MLLMs (Multimodal Large Language Models) integrate within their probabilistic vector spaces—into something new. Inspired by situated and intersectional approaches within critical data(set) studies (Knorr-Cetina 2009; Crawford and Paglen 2019; Salvaggio 2023; Pereira & Moreschi 2023; de Seta et al. 2024; Rettberg 2024) we argue that, “synthetic” does not merely mean artificial; it describes how specific visions—animated by automated assessments of data from a wide range of cultural, social, and economic areas—take shape in the process of human-machine co-creation. Some of these visions are collectively stabilized and inscribed into AI-generated outputs, revealing normative aspects of text-image datasets used to train the models. Others assemble layers of cultural encoding that remain ambiguous, contested, or even erased—reflecting how multiple possibilities of meaning fall outside dominant probabilistic patterns.

While generative models are often perceived as systems that always produce output, this is not always the case. Like social media platforms, most models incorporate filters that block or alter content deemed inappropriate. The prompting loops—from images to stories to image derivatives—involve multiple rounds of rewriting stories generated by the model in response to input images. The distance between input and output images corresponds with the transformations in the initially generated and revised (or jailed) image descriptions. 

As a method, jail(break)ing exposes the skewed imaginaries inscribed in the models’ capacity to synthesize compliant outputs. The more storytelling iterations it takes to generate a new image, the stronger the platforms’ data-informed structures of reasoning come to the fore.

Methods and data

While our collection of sixty input images covers a range of seemingly unrelated issues, they all share two qualities: ambiguity and cultural significance. Many of these images qualify as sensitive, yet they are also widely and intensely circulated on ‘mainstream’ social media platforms.

Visual interpretation: Through a qualitative cross-reading of AI-generated output images, we analyzed how three different models respond to image-driven storytelling prompts. Through multimodal prompting (“I give you an image, you tell me a story”), stories were co-created to inform the generation of output images. By synthesizing ten output images per issue space into a canvas, we then examined how AI systems reinterpret, alter, or censor visual narratives and how these narratives, in turn, reinforce issue-specific archetypes.

Narrative construction: We approached image-to-text generation as structured by the operative logic of synthetic formulas—setting (where is the story set?), actors (who are the actors?), and actions (how do they act?). Driven by repetition-with-variation, these ‘formulas’ (Hagen and Venturini 2024), reveal narrative patterns and semantic conventions embedded in the models’ training data. 

Keyword mapping: We analyzed AI-generated descriptions of images’ content, form, and stance across models. Exploring both unique and overlapping keywords, the method uncovers how each model prioritizes certain vernaculars as a tagging device.

Research Questions

• Which stories can different AI models tell about different images, and which story archetypes emerge in the process of jail(break)ing?
• When do the models refuse to generate images? Which stories remain unchanged, and which need to be transformed?
• Which keywords do the models assign to describe the images’ content, form, and stance?

Key Findings

The different AI models—Grok-2, GPT-4o, and CoPilot—tell distinct stories about images based on their internal biases, content policies, and approaches to sensitive material. Their generated narratives differ in terms of modification, censorship, and interpretation, reflecting platform-specific content moderation frameworks.

• Grok-2 preserves more of the original content, making fewer alterations unless forced by content restrictions. It allows more controversial elements to remain but often introduces confusing substitutes.
• GPT-4o significantly neutralizes content, shifting violent, sexual, or politically sensitive imagery toward symbolic and abstract representations. It frequently removes specific cultural or historical references.
• CoPilot enforces the strictest content restrictions, often refusing to generate images or stories for sensitive topics altogether. It eliminates references to nudity, violence, or political figures and transforms potentially controversial scenes into neutral, inoffensive portrayals.

Stricter content policies amplify narrative techniques like suspense-building in AI-generated stories. CoPilot and GPT-4o lean into verbose storytelling to comply with guidelines, often elevating uncontroversial background elements into agentic forces. In the ‘war canvas’ story, for instance, CoPilot foregrounds the background, narrating: ‘The square pulses with energy, driven by a community determined to create change.’ Grok, by contrast, sometimes fabricates entirely new subjects—golden retrievers replacing NSFW models—paired with objects like fluffy carpets. In other cases, the model inserts public figures into generic scenarios, intensifying the images’ impact.

Generative AI’s so-called sensitivity is a synthetic product of dataset curation, content moderation, and platform governance. What models permit or reject is shaped by training data biases, corporate risk management, and algorithmic filtering, reinforcing dominant norms while erasing politically or socially disruptive elements. Rather than genuine ethical awareness, these systems engage in selective sanitization, softening controversy while maintaining an illusion of neutrality. This raises critical questions about who defines AI “sensitivity,” whose perspectives are prioritized over others, and how these mechanisms shape epistemic asymmetries in digital culture.

Erhard Schüttpelz is laureate of the Scholar’s Prize 2025

The Aby Warburg Foundation awards its scholar’s prize to Erhard Schüttpelz, Professor of Media Theory and PI at the CRC 1187 Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen. The award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the arts, culture and humanities.

→ press release of the Aby-Warburg-Stiftung

About the laureate Erhard Schüttpelz

Erhard Schüttpelz, born in 1961 in Haldern (now Rees), studied in Hannover, Exeter, Bonn, Cologne and Oxford (St. Johns) and completed his doctorate in 1994 at the University of Bonn. In 1994/95 he was a Feodor Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation at Columbia University, New York. From 1996 to 1998, he was a postdoc at the DFG Research Training Group Theory of Literature and Communication at the University of Konstanz; from 1998 to 2003, he was a research associate preparing and then working at the DFG Collaborative Research Centre Media and Cultural Communication at the universities of Cologne, Bonn and Aachen. He completed his habilitation at the University of Konstanz in 2003, where he was scientific coordinator of the research initiative Cultural Theory and Theory of the Political Imaginary from 2003 to 2005, funded by the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize awarded to Albrecht Koschorke. In 2005, he was a fellow at the IFK (Vienna). Since 2005, he has been a professor of media theory at the University of Siegen. Principal investigator of the DFG Research Training Group Locating Media and the DFG Collaborative Research Center Media of Cooperation. 2012-2016 Elected member of the DFG Review Board 103, 2018-2022 Member of the University Council of the University of Siegen. He has also held fellowships in Weimar, Konstanz, Berlin (FU), Münster and at the Center for Advanced Studies – Erlangen.

His interests are in the fields of philology and cultural studies. They first led him from structuralist literary theory to the linguistic theory of rhetorical figures, fuelled by a fondness for impossible syntheses that could have bridged the gap between continental and analytical philosophy, for cross-disciplinary border crossers, for the history of science in the humanities in the context of science and technology studies, and for figures of transition, border objects, tricksters, disturbances, images. He found his home in the German media studies that had emerged in the meantime – of which he says they are »a discipline that I could neither have studied nor better have thought up in order to pursue my interest in opportunities for cooperation.«

His films and books include, among others, a film with the working title Gaabi Cirey! and the voice of Hanns Zischler (with Anja Dreschke and Carlo Peters), the film A Kind of World War (with Anselm Franke, 2021), online at: https://www.hkw.de/de/app/mediathek/video/84649 and the books A Kind of World War / Eine Art Weltkrieg (with Anselm Franke, Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2021), Die Moderne im Spiegel des Primitiven. Weltliteratur und Ethnologie 1870-1960 (Munich 2005), Deutland (Berlin 2023) and Medium, Medium: Elemente einer Anthropologie (Berlin 2025). His volume »Schlangenritual«. Der Transfer der Wissensformen vom Tsu’ti’kive der Hopi bis zu Aby Warburgs Kreuzlinger Vortrag (Berlin 2007), co-edited with Cora Bender and Thomas Hensel, emerged from a conference at the Warburg-Haus in 2002.

Date and title of Erhard Schüttpelz’s laureate lecture at the Warburg-Haus in the second half of 2025 are to be announced in the near future.

→ Publications by Erhard Schüttpelz on Researchgate

About the Scholar’s Prize of the Aby Warburg Foundation

With its scholar’s prize, the Wissenschaftspreis, the Aby Warburg Foundation has been recognizing outstanding research in the field of art history, cultural studies, and the humanities every year since 1995. An integral part of the award is that prizewinners are also expected to give a lecture at the Warburg Haus.

The Martin Warnke Medal was endowed by the Aby Warburg Foundation and Universität Hamburg to mark the retirement of art historian Professor Martin Warnke from the Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar. Since 2005, it has been awarded every three years for academic achievements in the field of cultural studies. The prize is named after Martin Warnke, who was professor of art history at Universität Marburg from 1971 to 1978. From 1979, he taught at Universität Hamburg and served as the director of the Research Centre for Political Iconography at the Warburg Haus in Hamburg. In 1991, he was awarded the Leibniz Prize. He retired in 2002 and was bestowed with the title professor emeritus. Martin Warnke was a member of the Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. In 2006, he received the Gerda Henkel Prize, an international research prize awarded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung Düsseldorf, and was granted an honorary doctorate by the Technische Universität Dresden in 2007 and by the Technische Universität Dortmund in 2010. Martin Warnke died on December 11th, 2019, in Halle/Saale.

About the Aby Warburg Foundation

The Aby-Warburg-Stiftung is a foundation under German civil law. The purpose of the foundation is to promote scholarship in Hamburg. It funds the Warburg professorship and places a special emphasis on the promotion of lectures at the Warburg Haus. To this end, it holds conferences, seminars, and symposia in the reading room of the Warburg Haus, which has been allocated to the foundation for such purposes. Lectures also form a central part of the scholarship programme, which is funded by the foundation. The foundation invites acclaimed researchers in the humanities and social sciences to take part in order to make their work known to a wider audience.

→ Read more about the foundation

How to deconstruct and transform digital infrastructures through practices of hacking, queering, countering, and resisting

We are excited to invite you to this summer’s Lecture Series on “Unstitching Datafication”. Inspired by the seam ripper figure and historical forms of technological resistance, we invited eight guest speakers from the arts, activism and academia to explore how digital technologies can be un- and re-stitched by working on their seams.

→ Website of the Lecture Series

About the lecture series

“Unstitching Datafication” means deconstructing and transforming digital technologies by working on their ‘seams’. This means examining the social and economic relations and how they have been and can be reconfigured by technology. We invited eight speakers from arts, activism, and academia to explore the limits of digital technology and discuss what it means to intentionally create seams, ruptures, and breakdowns within digital technologies and infrastructures. Even partial unstitching generates holes in the digital fabric that expose the inner workings of opaque digital systems. These holes create openings and opportunities to intervene in structures and algorithmic logic, allowing us to envision utopian futures and alternative digitalities.

The lecture series uses the figure of the seam ripper, or unstitcher, as a textile metaphor to permeate the digital realm, drawing inspiration from previous research: Mark Weiser’s notion of ubiquitous computing famously rests on the ideal of seamless data transfer, devices inform net-work connections, and the World Wide Web remains the most expansive digital fabric. The connection between weaving and computing runs deep. Ellen Harlizius-Klück called automatic weaving a “binary art”, which paved the way for one of the first machines to be operated by punched cards: the Jacquard loom in the early 19th century.

Using the figure of the unstitcher, we understand glitches and noise, the unintended yet often revealing features of digital systems, as options for productive resistance, disconnection, and subversion. Media theory, human geography, gender studies, and critical theory understand these moments as “glitch epistemologies” (Leszczynski & Elwood), “glitch politics” (Alvarez Léon), “queer counter conduct” (Lingel) or even “anti-fascist approach to artificial intelligence” (McQuillan). The often unassuming actions of resistance or obfuscation that lead to the unstitching and, ultimately, to the unravelling of digital processes expose the inherent fragility of digital systems and create spaces for creative interventions and counteraction.

Yet, instead of emphasizing the ‘textility’ of our digital world, the eight lectures focus on how to disrupt the digital world and the seams and frictions of datafication, where knowledge emerges, and resistance takes shape. Building on ‘unstitching datafication’, the series examines the flaws and breakdowns in the supposedly seamless connectivity of today’s technologies.

Lectures & Speakers

We invited eight guest speakers from the arts, activism and academia. They come from the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, USA, Germany and Great Britain.  In their lectures, they will focus on practices that can challenge, disrupt, and reconfigure existing norms and structures within digital environments where the sensing and sense-making of people, media, and sensors become intertwined.  Thus, our speakers will move beyond the destructive aspect inherent to unstitching seams and networks and instead ask how digital technologies can be unstitched through hacking, queering, countering, and resisting datafication and ‘data colonialism’ – be it through technical manipulations, artistic interventions, or activist action.

Event Details

• Dates: April 16 – July 16, 2025
• Location: University of Siegen, Herrengarten 3, Room: AH-A 217/18
• Streaming: via Webex
• Time: Wednesdays, 2:15 AM – 3:45 PM CET

How to Register

All events take place in hybrid form (on-site and via Webex). No registration is required if you would like to attend on-site. To attend the lecture online via Webex, please register here →

For more information about the program and detailed schedule, visit the lecture series’ website.

Contact

info[æt]sfb1187.uni-siegen.de

Follow us

Follow us on social media for more updates →

 #CRC2025 #Unstitching #glitch #DataColonialism #luddism

Thank you, and we hope to see you there!

Literature

Alvarez Léon, L. F. (2022). “From glitch epistemologies to glitch politics.” Dialogues in Human Geography 12(3), 384-388, DOI: 10.1177/20438206221102951.

Harlizius-Klück, E. (2017). “Weaving as Binary Art and the Algebra of Patterns.” TEXTILE 15(2), 176–197, DOI: 10.1080/14759756.2017.1298239.

Leszczynski, A., & Elwood, S. (2022). “Glitch epistemologies for computational cities.” Dialogues in Human Geography 12(3), 361-378, DOI: 10.1177/20438206221075714.

Lingel, J. (2020). “Dazzle camouflage as queer counter conduct.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 24(5), 1107-1124, DOI: 10.1177/1367549420902805.

McQuillan, D. (2022). Resisting AI: An Anti- Fascist Approach to Artificial Intelligence. Bristol: Bristol University Press.

The datafied Web – 6^th RESAW 2025 conference

June 4 – 6, 2025, at the University of Siegen

Registration for the 6^th RESAW conference (June 4-6) is now open. You can register on our conference website until May 15^th.

➞ Register now

About the registration

Registration for the pre-conference is not mandatory but highly appreciated. Spontaneous participation is also welcome. During registration, please indicate whether you will be joining us for dinner. Vegetarian and vegan options will be available. If you have specific dietary requirements, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the organizers. We aim to include precarious scholars—please contact the organizers if you need support or would like to discuss possible options. Email: RESAW25-datafiedweb[æt]uni-siegen.de

About the conference

We look forward to more than 40 presentations by over 70 researchers from 11 countries who shape the amazing program of the 6th RESAW 2025 conference. The conference will take place on June 4-6 at the University of Siegen.

The conference promises insightful discussions on current research questions related to the trends, trajectories, and genealogies of a datafied and metric-driven web. It will also foster critical dialogue on the challenges and opportunities posed by the rise of platform-driven ecosystems.

For more information about the program and detailed schedule, visit the conference website datafiedweb.net.

Follow us on social media for more updates ➞ 

 #CRC2025 #resaw25 #webhistory #webarchives #datafication #archives

The 2025 RESAW conference is organized by the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 “Media of Cooperation” at the University of Siegen in cooperation with the Centre for for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) at the University of Lux-embourg. The conference is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) and the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).

The new summer program

We welcome our members back to the new semester and summer program.

→ our events

We are excited to announce our upcoming summer program which includes

• several workshops and conferences incl. the RESAW 2025 “The Datafied Web” conference, which doubles as the CRC’s annual conference,
• the lecture series “Unstitching Datafication,”
• three MGK Masterclasses (Workshop [Media] Practice Theory),
• the MGK Writing Retreat and Research Colloquium,
• and a Summer School.

This semester’s edition of the Research Forum will feature an event series dedicated to Science Communication & Public Engagement, including sessions on open science, communication strategies, and stakeholder engagement. 

We look forward to inspiring talks and intriguing discussion. See you in Siegen or online!

Catalina Goanta, Benjamin Peters, Jürgen Streeck and Jill Walker Rettberg are new Mercator Fellows at the CRC 1187 

The Collaborative Research Center (CRC 1187) “Media of Cooperation” welcomes four new Mercator Fellows: Catalina Goanta, Benjamin Peters, Jürgen Streeck and Jill Walker Rettberg. These outstanding researchers will contribute their scientific expertise and innovative approaches to the CRC 1187. 

About the Mercator Fellowship at the CRC 1187

The CRC 1187 awards Mercator Fellowships to outstanding researchers worldwide to extend scientific collaboration within its network. Mercator Fellows work closely for extended periods with one or more projects.  Together with its regular members, Mercator Fellows study digital, data-intensive media to develop interdisciplinary approaches further and help shape the CRC’s research programme. Including these renowned researchers strengthens the international network of the CRC 1187 and promotes the transfer of knowledge and ideas, which is of central importance for contemporary digital research at the CRC.

The Mercator Fellowship is a module within the German Research Foundation’s funding programme intended to facilitate a sustainable research exchange between the researchers of the CRC 1187 and the fellows.

About the Mercator Fellows

Exploring the new multimedia research tool “Bundle Explorer: Berühren”

with Bina E. Mohn (Center for Camera Ethnography, Berlin) and Astrid Vogelpohl (University of Siegen)

Last December, the CRC researchers from project B05 presented their self-developed new research platform, the “Bundle Explorer”, to the research community. During a one-day workshop, they discussed how to use this tool and tested new exploration paths and ways of thinking. With the Bundle Explorer, the researchers are making an important contribution to the development of practice-theoretical methods at the CRC.

About the research platform Bundle Explorer

The Bundle Explorer is a multimedia research platform developed by Bina E. Mohn, Astrid Vogelpohl and Pip Hare. With this research tool, the team aims to contribute to the understanding of situated sensory practices in digitized everyday worlds.

The researchers developed the platform as part of their camera ethnographic research on sensory practices in digital childhood. Their methodology was based on Ludwig Wittgenstein and his language game approach. With the Bundle Explorer, short films can be played back and the sensory practices they reveal can be examined more closely. The name Bundle Explorer refers to Theo Schatzki’s theory (2016) that human action and sensory practices and the environments in which they take place form bundles. As suggested by Schatzki, the Bundle Explorer can be used to examine these bundles more closely and understand them better.

The “Bundle Explorer: Berühren” presented in the Blicklabor “Berührung” is the prototype of the new research tool. With this prototype, we researchers can discover and explore situations and ways of touching in digital childhood in a variety of ways.

The “Bundle Explorer: Berühren” is based on 60 short films from six years of camera-ethnographic research observations on the everyday family life of young children. The films were ‘edited’ from many hours of video material and show in particular moments of touch. In the Bundle Explorer, these films are divided into six categories of touch, which reflect the diversity of forms of touch in young children’s everyday digital lives:

acoustic touch
immersive touch
body touch
thing touch
gestural touch
Display touch

These categories allow Bundle Explorer users to explore the films in their own way.

About the Blicklabor „Berührung“

For the camera ethnography, Blicklabore refers to encounters , „Blicke als Blicke zu reflektieren und in konkreten Forschungs­zusammenhängen damit zu experimentieren“ (Mohn 2023, S. 198).

The B05 project team invited the Wittgenstein expert Birgit Griesecke, the science sociologist Klaus Amann and the educational scientist Jochen Lange to the Blicklabor alongside an interested specialist audience. The Blicklabor took place on December 13 at the University of Siegen (→ to the event) and offered the opportunity to get to know the „Bundle Explorer: Berührung“ in more detail and try it out in a workshop phase. While exploring the Bundle Explorer, the participants were encouraged to watch the films, track down, compare and classify children’s sensory practices and examine classifications, variants and borderline cases. The participants then discussed their individual explorations and impressions.

About the „Bundle Explorer: Berühren“ using the example of the category „acoustic touch“

The category “acoustic touch” is one of six touch categories that are explored in the “Bundle Explorer: Berühren” video material. The acoustic aspect of touch plays a special role in the films in the acoustic touch category. When selecting and compiling the films, researchers were interested in how acoustic touch can be applied and contoured.

Users end up in this category rather by chance: After selecting a video in the start tableau (image 1), the tool offers them a compilation of two film scenes (image 2) that are not yet named according to any category: In the first video, a 2-year-old child listens to music with an MP3 player; in the second video, a toddler explores a smartphone and is surprised by the ringtone melody. Descriptive approaches are used to identify bundles of practices and their material arrangements (Fig. 3) and the question arises as to what these films have in common.

The Bundle Explorer then invites users to explore further “variations” (image 4) and “borderline cases” (image 5) of acoustic touches. The variants include videos in which one child makes a squeaking noise with a balloon, another makes his voice vibrate and another sings with his grandmother on his cell phone (image 4). As borderline cases, the Bundle Explorer offers videos in which touching is not clearly recognizable. For example, in the video in which the adult acts acoustically but the child does not react (image 5).

All these cases serve to better understand acoustic touch in children. The researchers are particularly interested in how children are touched by the respective sounds. Based on the videos, the researchers identified three types of acoustic touch in which touching and being touched is shown through:

Music, movement and dance
Voices, conversation and singing
Noise, experiment and improvisation

However, the video material in the Bundle Explorer not only invites you to explore the questions of how acoustic touch manifests itself in children and what triggers it. The videos also invite us to imagine other forms of touch that have not yet been filmed.

About the expert contributions

The invited experts emphasized the innovative content of the research platform, which allows new approaches to sensory experiences and enables an in-depth examination of research questions relating to human sensory and action practices.

The Bundle Explorer is an important tool for praxeological research, allowing non-verbal gestures and actions to be examined from a visual perspective. With the Blicklabor, the research team has also created a convincing event format that allows a critical examination of non-verbal sensory practices and brings researching gazes and gaze differences to bear.

Similar to an Alpenföhn, as Birgit Griesecke emphasized, the Bundle Explorer brings spectacular distant views closer for a limited period of time. However, the perceptible proximity – in her comparison of the mountains – also brings with it euphoria, headaches and dizziness (after the mountains). In her opinion, it is crucial in research on sensory practices to keep the experiences present in such a way that they can be integrated into the research. For further development, she suggests including touch in research beyond everyday digital family life. This would bring the relationship between touch and digitality into focus in even greater detail.

Jochen Lange compared the Bundle Explorer to a ‘Findemaschine’ or a ‘Findespiel’, that moves between publication and research tool. For him, the function and meaning of touch represent alternative approaches with which sensory practices can be further explored with the help of the Bundle Explorer.

For Klaus Amann, the Bundle Explorer has an experimental character that opens up reflective moments and allows new insights. According to him, touch should also be questioned critically under the conditions of the digital world.

Together with the participants, the experts made numerous suggestions for advancing research into digital sensory practices and further work on the Bundle Explorer. Their suggestions included looking at sensory practices in the context of “atmospheres”, including visual touch, taking resonance into account when analyzing touch and not seeing touching and being touched as necessarily related characteristics of touch.

The B05 research team would like to thank all participants for the critical and inspiring exchange!

The link to the “Bundle Explorer: Berühren” as well as the template for creating your own Bundle Explorer (de/en) are available on request from Astrid Vogelpohl.

References

Bina E. Mohn (2023): Kamera-Ethnographie – Ethnographische Forschung im Modus des Zeigens. Transcript.

Theodore R. Schatzki (2016): Praxistheorie als flache Ontologie. In: Praxistheorie. Ein soziologisches Forschungs­programm. Transcript, S. 29-44.

Birgit Griesecke & Werner Kogge (2022): Mit Wittgenstein arbeiten. Ein Methoden Manual, Working Paper Series Collaborative Research Center 1187 Media of Cooperation, No. 24.

About the B05 research team

The project B05 „(Early) Childhood and Smartphone. Family Interaction Order, Learning Processes and Cooperation” examines sensory practices in digital childhoods and makes a fundamental contribution to understanding the cooperative constitution of the human and technical sensorium.

Astrid Vogelpohl is a researcher and conducts camera-ethnographic research on subjectivation practices in everyday digital family life.

Bina E. Mohn was a researcher in B05 until the end of 2023. She researches reflexive ethnography, visual anthropology and media. She is an expert for camera ethnography: kamera-ethnographie.de

Special Issue “Frictions: Conflicts, Controversies and Design Alternatives in Digital Valuation” of Digital Culture & Society

Edited by Marcus Burkhardt (Paderborn University), Tatjana Seitz (University of Siegen), Jonathan Kropf (University Kassel) and Carsten Ochs (University Kassel).

The latest special issue of Digital Culture & Society takes a look at frictions of digital infrastructures.

➞ See the Special Issue

About the Special Issue

Digital infrastructures often appear to run smoothly – but it is precisely in their frictions that value conflicts, power asymmetries and scope for design become apparent. The latest special issue “Frictions: Conflicts, Controversies and Design Alternatives in Digital Valuation” takes a look at these areas of tension. The issue brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from media studies, STS and sociology – and offers valuable insights into the contradictory dynamics of the digital present. Contributors include CRC members Tatjana Seitz and Marcus Burkhardt as well as our CRC speaker Carolin Gerlitz.

Editoral text:

“With the proliferation of smart devices such as smartphones, smart watches, and smart speakers as well as the ongoing push toward smart cities, humans, technologies, and environments have become entangled in increasingly complex yet seemingly frictionless infrastructures of datafication and computation.

A seemingly frictionless user experience, however, conceals the contradictions, power asymmetries, and polarisations that shape our digital cultures. This issue of Digital Culture & Society takes the notion of frictions as a starting point for a situated analysis of our digital present. Frictions are sites where criticism is sparked, value conflicts are negotiated, and design alternatives are explored. By bringing together research from media studies, science and technology studies (STS), and sociology, this issue begins to synthesise and systematise the structural inconsistencies that frictions expose.”