This presentation focuses on Uganda, a country infamous for its state-sanctioned homophobia. This international attention has steadily increased the number of LGBT+ organizations in the country. In this article, we set out to study what organizations are more central and more peripheral in the Ugandan LGBT+ Twittersphere. Following an analytical framework around rationalities of mediated participation, we have studied with whom Ugandan LGBT+ organizations relate through mapping retweets and @mentions. The network maps reveal a dividing line between more well-funded and internationally connected organizations and younger, more peripheral organizations. Complementing these maps with qualitative data, we conclude that access to funds and negotiating visibility are rationales behind the network structure. The article reveals an interesting use of Twitter, both as an instrument for advocacy work and for expressing and negotiating themselves as part of a larger LGBT+ community.  

How do professionals at the forefront of digital technologies perceive their own work? Conducting 39 interviews with programmers around the world I asked them to describe their workday and then reflect upon an ideal workday.  Ideals revolved around the pleasure of solving difficult problems, to disrupt and to innovate, but ultimately to make the world a better place through their work. Many talked about a pleasurable state of “flow” in which they almost merged with the computer (their work tool). The empirical material reveals two interesting differences; one is between freelance programmers and those employed in big tech. Freelance programmers, in general, valued a work-life balance, clearly separating home and office, while big tech employees, on the other hand, tended to be younger (without kids), spending time in offices that blurred boundaries between home and office, providing employees with everything from ice cream parlors to fitness centers. Second, while most programmers looked at their profession as a vocation, programmers growing up in Asia (India and China) approached their profession as a means to a comfortable and exciting life (in terms of salary and working outside of their home countries). From this study, I will suggest that sustainable socio-technical work futures will be shaped around the new, the innovative and the meaningful. Work will, also in the future, be understood as a means to earn a living, but a meaningful one, and meaningful while earning it, as well as flexible and individually adaptable.   

Departing from popular imaginations around artificial intelligence (AI), this presentation engages in the I in the AI acronym but from perspectives outside of mathematics, computer science and machine learning. When intelligence is attended to here, it most often refers to narrow calculating tasks. This connotation to calculation provides AI an image of scientificity and objectivity, particularly attractive in societies with a pervasive desire for numbers. However, as is increasingly apparent today, when employed in more general areas of our messy socio-cultural realities, AI- powered automated systems often fail or have unintended consequences. This article will contribute to this critique of AI by attending to Nicholas of Cusa and his treatment of intelligence. According to him, intelligence is equally dependent on an ability to handle the unknown as it unfolds in the present moment. This suggests that intelligence is organic which ties Cusa to more contemporary discussions in tech philosophy, neurology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive sciences in which it is argued that intelligence is dependent on having—and acting through—an organic body. Understanding intelligence as organic thus suggests an oxymoronic relationship to artificial

In order to discuss, evaluate, and address social consequences of digitalization, we need to study and understand key people and events behind today’s digital innovations. This research contributes to an ongoing discussion within critical data studies by focusing on humans and meeting places shaping digital innovations that are/will be realized in this connected and data-saturated society we find ourselves in. The focus will be on angel investors and venture capitalist, pitching events and conferences where innovators and investors meet and intermingle. I will present conclusions from pilot studies conducted in Sweden (Malmö, at MINC-Malmö Incubator), South Africa (Stellenbosch, at the LaunchLab) and the US (Austin, at SXSW – South by southwest conference & Silicon Valley, at Facebook and Google headquarters). The overall research question is how key people and events contribute to, and shape, current and future digital innovations. With my expertise coming from the Social Sciences, the focus will be on culture (in an anthropological understanding of culture) which in this project operationalized through norms, values, rituals, and imaginaries surrounding humans and meeting places behind digital innovations. What consequences does these norms, values, rituals, and imaginaries have in our digitalized societies?  

The project departs from the importance attributed to digital innovations, the promise they bring with a more connected world where digital innovations are believed to solve most, if not all, problems that our society faces such as climate change, infection tracing, increased polarization, and intolerance. I am still conducting these pilot studies (the last will be in June) and by the time of the conference I will have results to present. 

This presentation attends to tensions and negotiations surrounding the introduction and development of a news-ranking algorithm in a Swedish daily. Approaching algorithms as culture, being composed of collective human practices, the study emphasizes socio-institutional dynamics in the everyday life of the algorithm. The focus on tensions and negotiations is justified from an institutional perspective and operationalized through an analytical framework of logics. Empirically the study is based on interviewswith 14 different in-house workers at the daily, journalists as well as programmers andmarket actors. The study shows that logics connected to both journalism and programming co-developed the news-ranking algorithm. Tensions and their negotiations around these logics contributed to its very development.One example is labeling of the algorithm as editor-led, allowing journalists to oversee some of its parameters. Social practices in the newsroom, such as Algorithm-Coffee, was also important for its development. In other words, different actors, tensions between them and how these were negotiated, co-constituted by the algorithm itself.

In data societies, as everyday activities are mediated by digital technologies, individuals are thrown into a digital existence, even if they are not aware of their digital interactions. Digital technologies are not value-free or unbiased. Contemporary discourses about digital natives and late adopters contribute to reinforcing negative stereotypes about older users of digital technologies and influence the design, development, marketing and usage of digital technologies. Such discourses disregard how digital trajectories and personal circumstances influence media use in all stages of everyday life. Hence, occasional digital technology users, and older adults in particular, stand a higher risk of exclusion and loss of autonomy. In this chapter, we briefly introduce ageism and digital ageism in data societies, definitions and previous research as a background and introduction to the following chapters. Our aim is to underline how socio-technical and cultural analyses may contribute to raising awareness about digital ageism in data societies. Only by initiating a discussion may existing power relationships be challenged and contemporary inequalities understood.

This anthology contributes to creating awareness on how digital ageism operates in relation to the widely spread symbolic representations of old and young age around digital technologies, the (lack of) representation of diverse older individuals in the design, development, and marketing of digital technologies and in the actual algorithms and datasets that constitute them. It also shows how individuals and institutions deal with digital ageism in everyday life.

In the past decades, digital technologies permeated most aspects of everyday life. With a focus on how age is represented and experienced in relation to digital technologies leading to digital ageism, digitalisation’s reinforcement of spirals of exclusion and loss of autonomy of some collectives is explored, when it could be natural for a great part of society and represent a sort of improvement.

The book addresses social science students and scholars interested in everyday digital technologies, society and the power struggles about it, providing insights from different parts of the globe. By using different methods and touching upon different aspects of digital ageism and how it plays out in contemporary connected data societies, this volume will raise awareness, challenge power, initiate discussions and spur further research into this field.

This chapter zooms in on the Silicon Valley, the US centre for innovative technology and home to 2000 technology companies. Inspired by the terminology of Sassen (2014), this chapter will describe how the technology industry has created a system of multiple modes of expulsions of “older” workers – from work relations, workspaces, ideologies and values, as well as digital products and services. The main purpose is to propose a theoretical framework guiding future empirical and critical research into the phenomenon of ageism, as well as other systems of oppression and discrimination in the technology industry. In this chapter, we propose a concept of “Silicon Valley Ageism” which is understood as negative attitudes, beliefs and behaviours towards adults perceived as “older” and manifested in interpersonal relations and institutional practices, as well as their narratives. This type of ageism can affect people already in their 30s. The aim of the chapter is to explore (1) what narratives of “older” age are constructed in Silicon Valley, (2) how this relates to workplace practices in the Valley and (3) how this has a bearing on the products and services coming out of Silicon Valley.

This chapter focuses on how technology culture, from the beginning, has been geared towards the youth. Early hacking, for example, had a teenage rebellion to it, anti-authoritarian prankish boys in, first, the computer labs of established American universities and later in the garages in middle-class Silicon Valley suburbia. This resonates in the industry's more recent turn towards entrepreneurship. The chapter thus provides a backdrop to how ageism in digital technologies can be understood and made sense from a more historical and cultural perspective. The chapter also discusses how technology culture's many different roots and influences have made certain tensions apparent, for example, left-leaning hippies versus libertarian entrepreneurs. How such tensions are navigated also points towards a fundamentally youth-oriented culture. Empirically the chapter is based on an extensive interview study conducted between 2018 and 2020

In this paper, we treat VR as a new writing space in the long tradition of inscription. Constructing Virtual Reality (VR) narratives can then be understood as a process of inscribing text in space, and consuming them as a process of "reading" the space. Our research objective is to explore the meaning-making process afforded by spatial narratives-to test whether VR facilitates traditional ways of weaving complex, multiple narrative strands and provides new opportunities for leveraging space. We argue that, as opposed to the linear space of a printed book, a VR narrative space is similar to the physical space of a museum and can be analyzed on three distinct levels: (1) the architecture of the space itself, (2) the collection, and (3) the individual artifacts. To provide a deeper context for designing VR narratives, we designed and implemented a testbed called RealityMedia to explore digital remediations of traditional narrative devices and the spatial, immersive, and interactive affordances of VR. We conducted task-based user study using a VR headset and follow-up qualitative interviews with 20 participants. Our results highlight how the three semantic levels (space, collection, and artifacts) can work together to constitute meaningful narrative experiences in VR.

The rise of digital technologies is a macro trend, forcing organizations to transform digitally. This so-called digital transformation (DT) is affecting the field of higher education, too. Higher education institutions (HEI) digitalize internal processes and offer digitally-enabled education services. Different types of barriers are challenging a successful DT and need to be mastered. Our study follows a longitudinal research design by surveying different student cohorts in the same courses. Before the pandemic, we identified the barriers to DT and transferred them into a research model. Pre-pandemic, we surveyed the influence of barriers perceived by management students on the DT process of their HEI. Taking the pandemic as a solid external driver on DT, we examined students’ intra-pandemic perception in the same courses as the pre-pandemic analysis. With pre-pandemic data, the projection explains over 50% of the adjustment problems of the DT process. Based on intra-pandemic data, the explanation decreases to 45%. Hypothetically, we expected a better explanation degree as an impact of the pandemic. Interestingly, results indicate that intra-pandemic perceptions got more complex and, therefore, less significant. 

Digitisation is among the macro-trends that significantly influence the business world in the twenty-first century. Firms striving to succeed in this environment must develop new strategic approaches. The accelerating development of information technology (IT) drives digitisation. Therefore, IT and business strategies must be integrated. In this context, the information systems literature promotes the concept of digital business strategies (DBSs), reflecting a fusion between IT and business strategies. However, knowledge of the types and characteristics of such DBSs is currently scarce. Therefore, we developed a conceptually and empirically grounded typology of DBS based on the well-known business strategy classification by Miles and Snow (1978). Using a dataset comprising 192 firms worldwide, we conducted a cluster analysis, identified basic types of DBS, and evaluated their effects on firm performance. Moreover, we identified four types of DBS: non-digital reactor, analyser, digital opportunist, and digital producer. The study contributes to a better understanding of new business strategy concepts in the digitisation context.

I en tid då medielandskapet är i ständig förändring och traditionell medieforskning konstant utmanas ökar behovet av att förena teknik, humaniora och samhällsvetenskap. Medie- och teknikforskning kräver innovativa angreppssätt för att navigera bland komplexa relationer mellan kultur, samhälle, ekonomi och teknologi.

I den här boken bjuder ledande forskare in till samtal om teknologins utmaningar och möjligheter. Här presenteras redskap för att utforska, beskriva, begreppsliggöra och förstå nya relationer mellan medieteknologier och deras omvärld – en kunskap som förbereder läsaren att på egen hand kombinera samhällsvetenskapernas kritiska analyser med teknikvetenskapernas tradition att utveckla tillförlitliga och effektiva system.

Tekniska mediestudier riktar sig till studenter inom ämnen som medieteknik, medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, kulturvetenskap, data- och systemvetenskap, interaktionsdesign och informatik.

Vi anpassar oss ständigt till de medieteknologier vi lever våra liv med, men hur kan vi få kunskap om hur de får oss människor att agera på olika sätt? I det här kapitlet får du bekanta dig med digital teknografi, en metod för att studera och analysera framväxande digitala teknologier som sätter teknologierna och deras förväntningar i centrum. Kapitlet utgår från självövervakningsteknologier, företrädesvis ”smarta” smycken, men fungerar lika bra för tjänster som TikTok och Instagram. Du får veta mer om nyckelbegrepp för att analysera marknadsföringsmaterial av framväxande digitala teknologier. Genom detta lär du dig hur till synes oskyldiga mobilappar kan bli föremål för vetenskapliga studier, kritik och teoretiserande.

Ugandan urban same-sex desiring individuals frequently encounter and navigate competing understandings of sexuality and sexual identity. Western essentialist understanding of sexual identity introduced by international development partners and transnational LGBT+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi- and Transsexual) activism, as well as media, offer an alternative to Ugandan non-essentialist and fluid subject positions. This article seeks to understand how young individuals with same-sex -desires in Kampala navigate tensions between Western and local understandings concerning sexuality. We have interviewed 24 young individuals with same-sex desires (unaffiliated and individuals working in LGBT+ organizations) and asked how they approach their sexuality and experiences living with same-sex desires in contemporary Kampala. The results reveal how interview participants engaged in a complex navigation between local community expectations, their own same-sex desires, and embeddedness in a global LGBT+ culture. Although the participants engaged in what Westerners would label as a "double life," the article problematizes the prescriptive norms of authenticity and "coming out." The conclusion is that the fluid vs essentialist dichotomy is too simplistic to be helpful when trying to understand the lives and aspirations of young people with same-sex desires.

The conditions of reading are shaped by materialities of that which is read. In the wake of digital publishing, reading activities have been impacted by the affordances of digital technologies, and the chapter “Reading and materiality: conditions of digital reading” charts some of the influential ideas on the material nature of digital reading, and arguing that print-centric notions of what constitutes “good” reading have at times overshadowed an in-depth reckoning of the role that digital technologies play today. The perceived dichotomy between so-called digitally born and digitized materials does not delineate a border between “digital” and “print” reading, even though many of the assumptions about the latter still permeate perceptions of what is more valuable to read. The digital reading condition that the chapter introduces does not exclude any forms. Rather, the current media moment includes print, audiobooks, printed books in all forms, as well as a multitude of digital forms in a complex, interlocking media economy.

This volume offers a critical overview of digital reading practices and scholarly efforts to analyze and understand reading in the mediatized landscape. Building on research about digital reading, born-digital literature, and digital audiobooks, The Digital Reading Condition explores reading as part of a broader cultural shift encompassing many forms of media and genres.

Bringing together research from media and literary studies, digital humanities, scholarship on reading and learning, as well as sensory studies and research on multimodal and multisensory media reception, the authors address and challenge print-biased conceptions of reading that are still prevalent in research, whether the reading medium is print or digital. They argue that the act of reading itself is changing, and rather than rejecting digital media as unsuitable for sustained or focused reading practices, they argue that the complex media landscape challenges us to rethink how to define reading as a mediated practice.

Presenting a truly interdisciplinary perspective on digital reading practices, this volume will appeal to scholars and graduate students in communication, media studies, new media and technology, literature, digital humanities, literacy studies, composition, and rhetoric.

Developments within digital technology are redefining how spectators will experience sport in the future. Combined with current crises, it creates new demands on how sports arenas can generate visitors to their events. An alternative can be virtual arenas. Therefore, this study aimed to understand the visitor’s expectations of a virtual arena and identify key factors that affected potential spectators’ intentions to visit a virtual arena. This qualitative study collected empirical data through focus groups. The Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT 2) was used as a theoretical foundation for the analysis. This study results in an enhanced hypothetical model arguing for additional elements affecting a spectator’s intention to visit a virtual arena. Our research contributes to helping shape future research on and practical implementation of virtual arenas.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced a transition to digital teaching in higher education institutions (HEIs) as it was the only safe method for higher education (HE) teaching during the pandemic. However, this crisis emphasized the barriers students face worldwide. For digital HE teaching to survive in the future, these barriers should be overcome. The present paper aimed to systematically identify these barriers and present recommendations to overcome them. For this purpose, a quantitative survey (n = 369) was conducted with students in three countries, and qualitative student statements were analyzed. Possible countermeasures for corresponding barriers are described, and related stakeholders are identified. Thus, the study provided an overview of recommendations for stakeholders to overcome the barriers. The recommendations to resolve most barriers entail offering hybrid formats, adjusting lecture design, and ensuring proper communication.

AbstractIn Sweden as well as internationally the teaching and research nexus has been described as the defining charac-teristics of higher education promoting generic skills such as information analysis and critical reflection. Vertically Integrated Projects has been proposed as one educational strategy where research and teaching are linked by in-viting students to take active part in actual research projects. The strategy is well aligned to Scholarship of teaching and learning enabling the transition from a teacher-centred accepted knowledge to a student-centred perspective where students are invited as producers of knowledge. The aim of the current study was to explore students’ experiences of participation in a research-based learning activity with academia and industrial partners, designed as a qualitative explorative study using focus group interviews. Findings describe not only factors students find motivating for learning, but also their experience of being part of professional life with its benefits and challenges.

The one-page infographic gives a basic visual introduction to the data in cultural and creative industries. The image is available in three languages - English, Italian and Estonian. 

Data-based Cultural and Creative Industry organisation. On the one-page visual guide will find answers to:

1. Why are data-driven decisions important?

2. What is the role of data in the organisational processes?

3. Does data help measure impacts?

The Impact Canvas and the visualised guidelines to fill out the impact canvas are outcomes of the research project Me-Mind. The aim of these visual materials is to support the self-assessment of cultural and creative organisations to understand their potential impact and to identify the necessary data to measure the impact of a cultural and creative industry organisation.

Illustrated guideline #2:Data collection methods for CCIs.  The one-page visual overview will give a basic introduction to cultural and creative industries to the following questions:

1. How to collect data? What are the advantages of the various techniques?

2. Data is everywhere, even where we don’t expect it!

This paper explores the role of anticipated futures of automation in public administration. Engaging with ethnographic research with stakeholders from roughly ten municipalities in Sweden, this paper examines the tension between different ways of imagining automated work futures and the extent to which they are associated with (or not) technologies. Automating data-driven processes is believed to alleviate administrative drudgery and support a goal-driven, efficient public sector. Various stakeholders participate in the implementation of automation systems, including corporate actors, managers, politicians, and civil servants. This group of stakeholders has diverse perspectives and expectations regarding the future of work automation and its role in the organisation of public services. Some see automated work processes as a way to boost efficiency, productivity, and precision through algorithmic data processing; others, however, see them as ways to allow professionals to spend less time on repetitive, rule-based, and seemingly tedious tasks, so that they can focus on their core professional practice. Challenging established narratives about work automation, this paper suggests how automation can be used to visualise, think about, and communicate organisational change without involving any technology per se, but rather as an empty signifier to which future-making practices can be affixed and legitimised. By emphasising social expectations and experiences, the paper interrogates emerging automated work futures in ways that move beyond techno-optimism and economic-political goals of efficiency and optimisation, not the least by showing that automation is situated, social and contingent.

Museums have always used different media to communicate, widen perspectives and bring new knowledge, but in the era of digital media, their various offerings are increasingly part of the media ecosystem. Our research interventions explored the possibility of reusing existing digitised material in a participatory setting. The aim was to explore the object-centred audience participatory method in digital settings. We held a series of digital and in-person workshops that invited the participants to “imagine” narratives about the provenance of the museum’s objects and journeys to Sweden in a playful and creative exploration. We could observe how the virtual workshop setting supported focused discussions, and allowed zooming, drawing and remixing of digital photographs to facilitate conversation. The workshop participants on-site worked with the museum objects on display to remediate them through photos, drawings, clay modelling, and writing down thoughts and questions about the objects on discussion postcards. The participants’ contributions were included in the virtual collection database (Carlotta), under the same collection as the other museum objects, making the remediation process circular. We argue that object-centred methods enable audience participation in digital media ecosystems both in museums and with other media makers. The audience’s expectations and experiences from using other media bring them to the digital museum platforms with a willingness to explore, remix and integrate.

The increased demand for information during the Covid-19 pandemic inspired projects todescribe the pandemic’s progress via data visualization. Critically analyzing the publisheddata visualization projects (DVPs) contributes to establishing a framework that supportsboth understanding and composing DVPs that evolve over time. Drawing upon constructedgrounded theory, we develop an analytical model for creating DVPs in a journalistic or public communication context. For our analysis, we selected Covid-19 public service media DVPsin the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden and Estonia as well as DVPs created by global andlocal data activists. The analysis of these examples provides an understanding of (1) theimplied agency standing of the authors of the visualizations, (2) the kinds of editorial layer(data, visual representation, annotation or interactivity) that inform the creation processand (3) what newsrooms and data visualizers can learn from this practice to create understandable, meaningful and engaging DVPs of (critical) events that evolve over an extendedperiod. Our model supports data visualization practitioners in making informed choiceswhen creating data stories. 

When we interrogated audience studies in the context of reimagining communication, we noted a backward moving trend where previous critical and constructivist understanding of audiences has increasingly been reduced to the (post)positivist views of audiences as data in the media industry (Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt & Meyer zu Hörste, 2020). The datafication trend has reduced audiences to clicks, likes, comments. It has thus removed the diversity and complexity of the lived experiences that have characterised audience research in the constructivist epistemologies. This presentation introduces an analytical framework of Data Loop (Mathieu & Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, 2020), which shows how audience data circulates between the audiences and media institutions, showing that there are formatting and transformative moments in which engagement with data is translated into action. This presentation will unpack how the formation and transformation of actions are influenced by the individual, technological, social and contextual assemblages. Inspired by Derek Layder’s work on entangled social domains: psychobiography, situated activity, social networks and contextual resources (1997, 2021), we will discuss how the positivist, numerical representation of the audience data is handled in the media industry. We argue that audience data is negotiated within the framework of multiple influences. For instance, individual and collective skills, data encounters, organisational and professional culture, technological platforms, competitors practices form a complex network of factors that frame the process of translating positivist data into actions. As such, the pragmatist approach (Creswell & Creswell, 2018) taken to the audience data in the media industry ignores the positivist assumptions ingrained in the audience data and instead is concerned with the application. We will use the data loop model and the social domains to pinpoint some of the translation moments and open the discussion of the potential consequences of such translations. 

References:

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (5th edition). SAGE Publications, Inc.

Layder, D. (1997). Modern social theory: Key debates and new directions. UCL Press.

Layder, D. (2021). Social sciences, social reality and the false division between theory and method: Some implications for social research. SN Social Sciences, 1(2), 47. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43545-020-00052-y

Mathieu, D., & Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, P. (2020). The Data loop of media and audience. MedieKultur: Journal of Media and Communication Research, 36(69), 116–138. https://doi.org/10.7146/mediekultur.v36i69.121178

Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, P., & Meyer zu Hörste, H. (2020). Reimagining audiences in the age of datafication. In M. Filimowicz & V. Tzankova (Eds.), Reimagning Communication: Experience (Vol. 2, pp. 179–195). ROUTLEDGE. http://hdl.handle.net/2043/30973

The talk will give a brief overview from experiences from Me-Mind project, where we have worked with the idea of how to experience data and make culture count. Starting with the assumption that cultural and creative industries have an impact, we will discuss how we can think about data and measurement to understand that impact. Considering the challenges of identifying indicators, distinguishing between outputs and outcomes, and identifying indicators, data and data analysis opportunities, the presentation addresses briefly the questions of what is data about impact, what can be done with the data, and finally, what is needed for a creative, but also critical understanding of data about cultural industries.

When new data practices are being deployed at cultural heritage organisations, a new set of apprehensions and insecurities emerge. We invite participants to the interactive session where we employ monsters to explore what is happening with data practices in cultural heritage organisations. The participants will confront/get to know their data monsters through interactive exercises: depicting the monster, naming the monster and addressing the monster.

As contemporary research conceptualizes the agency of technology and data through the figure of the monster, our workshop aims to explore the monstrous aspects of data practices so that we might learn to live (differently) with our monsters. In the three-part exercises, the participants will explore the mutuality of agency in relation to data practices as monsters.

The workshop is intended for people who are working with data in the cultural heritage organisations – through collections’, management’, visitors’ or other kinds of data. In this workshop, we will experiment with monster making as a collaborative inquiry into data practices. Data and activities around it are often very elusive, and we hope that after the workshop, participants will be better aware of their own ideas about data practices or will be equipped to conduct a similar workshop at their home institution with concerned and wary colleagues to discuss data monsters and their care.

As an academic researcher, I have proposed that the way we celebrate metrification and numbers as measures of our work has implications in the misinformation and fake news. If we think things that have lots of likes or shares are indicators of great engagement - what are we missing out on our understanding of engagement 

In this pictorial, we present Kolam, a visual artform originating in Tamilnadu, South India, as an ecofeminist computational art practice. We provide a visual documentation of Kolam's Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH) through eight characteristics based on existing research and authors’ personal experiences as Kolam practitioners. We begin by framing Kolam as an ecofeminist practice, highlighting cultural and ecological characteristics of Kolam as a Tamil tradition. We then illustrate evolving hybrid multimedia and contemporary technological practices that characterize Kolam as computational art. Our aim is to present a cohesive and compelling visual narrative using the artwork of authors and four contemporary Kolam practitioners to inspire creativity and highlight challenges for relational knowledge production in design and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research.

In this pictorial paper, we present a series of drawing conversations held between two humans, mediated by computational GAN models. We consider how this creative collaboration is affected by the hybrid inclusion of more-than-human participants in the form of watercolour and artificial intelligence. Our drawing experiments were an extension of our search for new ways of seeing and telling, which includes a reflection of the extent to which more-than-human elements took part in our creative process. We discuss our tendencies to form strange interpretations and assign meaning to the unpredictable and ambiguous spaces we created with them. We further speculate on the characteristic material agencies they revealed in our interactions with them. Finally, we contend how such collaborations are already and always embedded and embodied in our ways of seeing and knowing in design and creativity research.

This one-day workshop invites designers, researchers and practitioners whose work might involve design, to collectively speculate about designed artefacts and technologies through the creation of drawing conversations: visual dialogues resulting from the merging of drawings created by different people. The workshop aims to use drawing as an activity for collaborative engagement with ambiguity, interpretation and mutual learning. Through drawing activities, we aim to join in Venice's rich creative traditions, and develop speculative visualisations in order to find common grounds between the diverse research interests of our organisers and participants.

Digital media conditions shape new forms of reading. We read on a daily basis on various digital platforms: we read books, we search for information while reading on screens, we use apps on our smartphones, and we read audiobooks. A number of these practices challenge the former print-biased definitions of reading to which we are accustomed, and foreground intermedial practices of aesthetic works. They also challenge how we understand the sensory input that is activated while we read such works and in what contexts such reading takes place. The aim of this paper is to present our analysis of  these extended practises of reading in a digital landscape by proposing reading as a travelling concept (Bal 2002) that moves across different media contexts and moves inbetween disciplinary concerns. Central to our analysis is the material and intermedial interplay between medium and material affordances which in turn shapes the reading experience (Hayles 2005). 

By bringing selected research fields and contributions regarding reading into dialogue with each other, we will exemplify what we see are common scholarly issues when analyzing digital reading today, specifically the multisensory address inherent in many digital texts: we are invited to touch, listen, watch, possibly take part in movement and interaction, look at images and text, listen to the timbre of voices of an audiobook reading and so forth. These elements must, we argue, play a larger role when analyzing these distinctly digital reading conditions (reimagining Jerome McGann’s 1991 analyses of the textual condition). In this paper, through analyses of digital reading situations in Tender Claws Pry (2014) and Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You (2021) read by Aoife MaMahon that challenge the print bias that is still the foundation of the reading concept, we explore the assumptions and value judgments that imbue the concept of reading. 

Att läsa digitalt, på en datorskärm eller annan enhet, skiljer sig från att läsa på papper. Syftet med den här webbtexten är att fler ska få kunskap om digital läsning. Det är också en viktig förberedelse inför digitaliseringen av de nationella proven.

How can we, as social scientists, make sense of the promises and implications of automated and data-driven systems that are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and essential for the Nordic welfare states? What are the theoretical and methodological tensions and possibilities that these systems pose to research when they assemble and disassemble existing structures, organisational logics and dependencies?

Over the last few years, critical social science research has established that data harvesting and digital tracking, in particular, pose a general societal challenge that risks undermining Nordic values of autonomy and equity and the overall welfare of people. At the same time, the welfare state and welfare provision are increasingly characterised by processes of datafication, promoting uses of data analytics and automated decision-making (ADM). Researchers have flagged datafication as a specific concern for the public sector in relation to questions of ADM systems, and other forms of data-driven optimization. Despite the burgeoning literature on various concerns and the ethical guidelines and regulatory initiatives that try to respond to them, however, we have engaged so far with a limited range of theoretical and methodological approaches to explore the social dynamics at play in concrete contexts of ADM.

This roundtable brings together key scholars that engage critically with the social aims and implications of datafication to address how ADM is imagined, practised and experienced in different empirical contexts and across various organisational levels in the Nordics. The roundtable will open with short ’provocations’ through which the speakers present and contextualise concepts they have used or would like to promote in the study of emerging automated and data-driven systems. The provocations are followed by a joint discussion about how these concepts can support sociological research that studies the promises and implications of automated and data-driven systems as part of the myths and realities of the Nordic welfare states, now and in the future.

In the Nordic countries, which are known for their expansive welfare systems, public administration is increasingly being viewed as a potential automation site. Data-driven process automation is believed to alleviate administrative drudgery and support a goal-driven, efficient public sector. In the implementation of automation systems, a variety of stakeholders participate, including corporate actors, managers, consultants, politicians and civil servants. As stakeholders, these groups have diverse perspectives and expectations regarding the anticipated future of automation and its role in the organization of public services. The idea of automated work processes is accepted by some as a way to boost efficiency, productivity, and precision through algorithmic data processing; others, however, see such systems as ways to let professionals spend less time on repetitive, rule-based, and seemingly tedious tasks so that they can focus on their core professional practice. This paper engages with the tensions between the different ways of imagining automatized futures by reporting from ethnographic research with stakeholders from roughly ten municipalities in Sweden, as well as digital technographic studies of two world- leading work automation platforms. Using the sociology of expectations as a theoretical framework to illuminate these tensions, this paper explores the role of anticipated automation when organizations imagine change. The paper shows that automation can be used to help envision, think about, and communicate organizational change without involving any technology, but rather as a metaphor to which future-making practices can be attached and legitimized. Work automation is understood in the paper as fundamentally social and structured as well as affected by expectations regarding future benefits and potential risks. By explicitly paying attention to expectations and experiences, the paper allows for an interrogation of emerging automated work futures that goes beyond techno- optimism and economic-political goals of efficiency and optimisation, not the least by illustrating work automation’s situated and contingent nature.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are facing significant progress in their digitalization. Covid-19 is an external affordance in which digitalization helps to secure social distance. Internal affordances are requirements to enhance the students’ learning experience. We analyze students’ attitudes toward the digitalization of their HEI based on empirical data from two groups of students within the same study program during the pandemic. Before the pandemic, the first group started on-campus and was forced into online teaching. The second group started online. Our results show that students, to a high degree, perceive harm in their learning success. At the same time, they have trust in the HEI’s data handling. Generally, the group, which started online, shows a slightly higher negative perception. The differences between the two groups show a low to medium degree. Our work contributes to clarifying the impact of having to start studies online, which seems to be minor.