Digital Transformation is one of the megatrends to re-shape industries, non-profit sectors, higher education, and even societies. Digital technologies merge with physical production processes provoking changes in value creation processes. These changes may lead to positive effects such as more effectiveness, revised business models, and closer customer contact. However, there are also negative effects hindering the digital transformation journey. As many firms still struggle, it is essential to understand the barriers which slow down or even stop a digital transformation. Based on qualitative data from 525 respondents working in different sectors, we reevaluate and extend an existing model by using a triangulation approach. The result is a holistic socio-technical model of the barriers to digital transformation consisting of seven distinct dimensions. The model can serve as input for future research instruments. Firms can use it to reflect barriers in their digital transformation.

This Open Access book brings the experiences of automation as part of quotidian life into focus. It asks how, where and when automated technologies and systems are emerging in everyday life across different global regions? What are their likely impacts in the present and future? How do engineers, policy makers, industry stakeholders and designers envisage artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision-making (ADM) as a solution to individual and societal problems? How do these future visions compare with the everyday realities, power relations and social inequalities in which AI and ADM are experienced? What do people know about automation and what are their experiences of engaging with ‘actually existing’ AI and ADM technologies? An international team of leading scholars bring together research developed across anthropology, sociology, media and communication studies, and ethnology, which shows how by re-humanising automation, we can gain deeper understandings of its societal impacts.

This chapter discusses the Sarah Pink discusses how ethics and trust in AI and ADM have become bound up in industry and government frameworks which treat them as commodities which can be extracted from faceless publics and invested in machines. The second reason that automated technologies receive high levels of publicity or promotion is when they have saved, or are predicted to save, lives: for instance, through accident prevention, medical and pharmaceutical interventions or in humanitarian domains. In contrast, experiences and processes of automation as part of quotidian routines in our everyday lives in our homes, transport, at work and in education have slipped under the radar of much popular and academic attention. The messiness of the ADM and AI fields might be seen as a problem, and one way forward involves engaging in a cross-disciplinary mapping of ADM and AI definitions to produce taxonomies and classifications for a shared vocabulary.

I Sociologisk Forskning har undervisning och lärande tidigare diskuterats på flera sätt. Ämnet har bland annat behandlats i forskningsartiklar som undersökt skolbarns välbefinnande och utbildningsresultat (Aytar & Mella 2012), hinder för tillgång till högre utbildning (Ismail 2011), professionsutmaningar inom gymnasieutbildningen (Bruno 2012) och strukturella bestämningsfaktorer för akademiska karriärer (Behtoui 2017). Den sociologiska forskningspraktikens nära koppling till ämnets pedagogiska praktik har också medfört att personliga undervisningserfarenheter behandlats i olika texter (se specialnumret ”Sociologi i tiden”: Hansen, Johansson, Kollind m.fl. 1997).

Tidskriftens redaktion skulle framöver gärna se fler artiklar som behandlar frågor om undervisning och lärande inom sociologiämnet. Vi välkomnar därför sociologikollegor att inkomma med förslag till sådana artiklar eller färdiga manus. Det skulle kunna vara texter om hur vår praktik som sociologer påverkar vårt sätt att undervisa, hur sociologisk forskning omsätts i undervisning, hur olika pedagogiska metoder och material kan användas i sociologiundervisningen eller hur samhälleliga processer och strukturer påverkar vad som händer i klassrummet. Vi tror att sådana reflektioner med fördel skulle kunna ta sin utgångspunkt i utbildningssociologi och den svenska sociologins reflekterande tradition.

Som ett första steg mot att ge utrymme åt denna typ av artiklar publicerar vi i detta nummer ett samtal om hur undervisningen i sociologi har påverkats av övergången till digital undervisning under covid-19-pandemin. Vi bad fyra sociologikollegor, verksamma vid olika svenska lärosäten, att svara på några frågor utifrån sina erfarenheter som lärare, utbildningssamordnare och forskare. De medverkande är Martin Berg, professor i medieteknik och docent i sociologi vid Malmö universitet, som forskar om digital sociologi med särskilt fokus på kritiska studier av algoritmer och automatiseringsprocesser; Ida Lidegran, docent i utbildningssociologi vid Uppsala universitet, som ingår i Forskningsgruppen för utbildnings- och kultursociologi (SEC) och forskar om elitutbildningar och familjers utbildningsstrategier, migranters möte med det svenska utbildningssystemet samt utbildning och covid-19; Ulrika Schmauch, lektor i sociologi vid Umeå universitet, vars forskning handlar om social ojämlikhet i allmänhet och om ras, plats och kön i synnerhet; samt Glenn Sjöstrand, prefekt för Institutionen för samhällsstudier vid Linnéuniversitetet i Växjö, vars forskning i huvudsak är inriktad mot professionsstudier och särskilt ingenjörers professionella utveckling, men som även forskar om digital transformation, miljö och välfärdsfrågor.

Museums are participating in the capturing of global data for the perceived benefit of improved relationships with the public. This article proposes a framework for critically analyzing the ratification of museum visitors and visitor engagement, combining a critical lens from data studies with a social view of datafication as practice—a set of practices within a sociotechnical assemblage that is continuously reproduced by the choices made within and outside the museum. Museums are situated at the intersection of PierreBourdieu’s economic, cultural, and political fields; thus, I highlight some of the external social and technological pressures driving datafication in museums. Relying on public accounts and previous case studies, I argue that datafication of visitor engagement is made to work through data loops: circular processes between institutional practices of museums and social practices of audiences where data are collected, processed, and decided upon.

The German engineering sector is one of the most prominent industries in Germany in terms of revenues, the number of employees, and reputation for the “Made in Germany” brand. In this industry, digital transformation (DT) has become a significant trend. DT is more than optimizing internal processes by digital means. It entails the offer of digital services and products and the enhancement of customer experience. Complex barriers need to be overcome to drive this transformation forward. Therefore, our study analysis the organizational barriers to DT within the German engineering industry. We follow a quantitative approach to gain insight on organizational barriers by a comparison of digitalized and less digitalized enterprises and their DTs. Our research demonstrates that digitalized enterprises perceive lower degrees of certain barriers in leadership, culture, employees, and skills, which are essential parts in a socio-technical view. However, there are still barriers that digitalized enterprises are struggling with.

The ongoing process of digitalization and development of self-adaptive systems in manufacturing is announced as Industry 4.0. It hauls a fundamental change not only in production processes as the whole value chain of an enterprise is affected. Many practical approaches can be found which deal with the engineering aspects of Industry 4.0 technologies. A deeper discussion about the enterprise-wide use, integration and application is still missing. This paper examines the impact of the digital transformation on value chain processes. On the basis of a case study in cooperation with a German engineering company, we develop an overview of the actual integration state of Industry 4.0 into the value chain. Using the model of the value chain from Porter, we will show these impacts.

Digitization is among the macro-trends that significantly determine the business world of the 21st century. Firms striving to succeed in this environment have to develop new strategic approaches. The accelerating development of information technology drives digitization. Thus, IT strategy and business strategy need to be integrated. In this context, information systems literature promotes the concept of digital business strategy, reflecting a fusion between IT strategy and business strategy. However, currently, we do not know much about the characteristics and different types of such digital business strategies. To this end, we develop a conceptually and empirically grounded typology of digital business strategies. Based on a dataset of 281 firms worldwide, we carry out a cluster analysis, identify basic types of digital business strategies and evaluate their effects on firm performance. The paper contributes to a better understanding of new business strategy concepts. It thus enriches the extant insights from innovation management, strategic management, and information systems literature in the context of digitization.

Objectives: Digital transformation (DT) has become an imperative within research and practice. Still, companies experience obstacles when trying to pursue a successful DT. Numerous scientific sources have dealt with the identification of barriers to DT. In doing so, scientists have already produced reviews to identify and classify the barriers to DT. However, the scientific work often relates to specific company contexts. In addition, there is no structured overview of the literature on how to overcome barriers to DT. The mere identification provides an incomplete view on the barriers to DT and needs to be complemented by approaches to overcome them. Thus, our research question is: Which barriers and recommendations for action to DT exist within the scientific literature and how can they be clustered according to a holistic sociotechnical perspective?

Data and Method: Our study follows the approach of a structured literature review combined with additional focus group work to generate a concept matrix to structure barriers and recommendations for action. The conducted literature search generated 562 articles (without duplicates). After a first screening 148 articles were deemed to be applicable for our study. A more in-depth qualitative check generated 99 relevant articles. Different sections of these articles were openly coded into 178 barriers and 161 recommendations for action. These codes were then clustered in focus group sessions.

Results: The result of our research approach is a framework containing clustered barriers and cluster-related recommendations for overcoming. The following clusters were identified: individual, technical, financial, organizational alignment, organizational design, organizational culture, market environment, and regulatory. Our review discloses that not all clusters receive equal attention in the literature. In particular, organizational culture is given less consideration, while especially individual, technical and financial is in focus. The identified recommendations for action show that not all barriers can be solved by the companies themselves but require governmental support instead.

Conclusions: Our study generated a holistic framework. As barriers either slow down or even entirely hinder DT, understanding their nature is essential. Our discussion reveals that several barriers are contrasting each other. This implies that managers need to carefully balance DT initiatives. The framework provides guidance on doing so. The findings also provide a solid foundation for future research, as our literature review presents a state-of-the-art of current research and reveals research gaps.

How augmented reality and virtual reality are taking their places in contemporary media culture alongside film and television.

This book positions augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) firmly in contemporary media culture. The authors view AR and VR not as the latest hyped technologies but as media—the latest in a series of what they term “reality media,” taking their place alongside film and television. Reality media inserts a layer of media between us and our perception of the world; AR and VR do not replace reality but refashion a reality for us. Each reality medium mediates and remediates; each offers a new representation that we implicitly compare to our experience of the world in itself but also through other media.

The authors show that as forms of reality media emerge, they not only chart a future path for media culture, but also redefine media past. With AR and VR in mind, then, we can recognize their precursors in eighteenth-century panoramas and the Broadway lights of the 1930s. A digital version of Reality Media, available through the book's website, invites readers to visit a series of virtual rooms featuring interactivity, 3-D models, videos, images, and texts that explore the themes of the book.

Emerging digital technologies are becoming increasingly prevalent in contemporary society. As future- oriented, promissory, and sometimes yet to be realised, such technologies pose particular methodological challenges for digital social research since they partake in creating the future they aim at transforming. This paper proposes a methodological framework to study the construction of emerging digital technologies as meaningful phenomena. Corporate actors within this growing field adopt similar marketing strategies that involve sharing multimodal promotional materials on digital platforms where technical specifications blend with evocative stories. These stories employ a future- oriented vocabulary in which words such as change, re-imagination, reinvention, and transformation play an essential role. Building on recent ethnographic research, this paper demonstrates how emerging digital technologies are promoted by creating a symbolic and imaginary context in which such technologies make perfect sense. These studies focus on wearable devices, digital food technologies, and systems for work automation. The empirical examples demonstrate how the promotional materials involve discursive practices that produce a particular kind of situated and transformative knowledge that allows emerging digital technologies to appear meaningful. These empirical examples serve as a basis for the formulation of ’digital technography’ as a methodological framework that allows for an interrogation of how emerging digital technologies are imagined across different sites of knowledge production.

Departing from popular imaginations around artificial intelligence (AI), this article 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 our connected data societies, the importance of algorithms and automated systems is obvious. They determine search engines’ rankings, what driverless cars do when a child appears on the road, and stock market changes. Today data-driven algorithms and automated systems are everywhere.

While algorithms and automated systems themselves are often a topic of controversy and debate, this book is about the people behind them; it is an account of the cultures, values, and imaginations that guide programmers in their work designing and engineering software and digital technology. Technology, it is argued, is not neutral and developed free of context. And since algorithms and automated systems exercise power in connected data societies, it is pivotal to understand their creators, who could be labelled, it is argued in the book, Wizards of the Web.

This book is the result of an ethnographically inspired study based on interviews with software engineers and programmers, observations made at tech head quarters and conferences in Denmark, Sweden, Brazil, Germany, India, and the US, and a case study of the introduction of algorithmic automation on the front page of a Scandinavian newspaper.

The author, Jakob Svensson, is professor of Media and Communication Studies at Malmö University. The book is part of the research project Behind the Algorithm (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2018–2020). 

Vad kan falska nyheter, VR-glasögon och aktivitetsarmband lära oss om medieteknik som forskningsämne? Med utgångspunkt i tre forskningsbaserade exempel introducerar vi beräkningsmedier som ett nyckelbegrepp för framtida medieteknisk forskning. Begreppet bidrar till att ta fram digitala teknologiers datafierande karaktär och deras inflytande på relationen mellan människor och deras kroppar, mellan medier och vad som uppfattas vara verkligt i en medialiserad värld. Detta hjälper oss att bedriva vetenskaplig forskning inom ämnet medieteknik på sätt som både skapar förståelse för och bidrar till utvecklingen av digitala medier med hänsyn till deras tekniska, sociala, kulturella och ekonomiska förutsättningar.

Abstract. Digital objects have controversial roles in the exhibition space [1, 2],ranging from being a vague ‘must be’ element at the exhibitions signifying theircontemporaneity, to being a crucially important design tool shaping museumexperience. Departing from the museum communication studies, this articleseeks to provide an analytical framework about the digital exhibits within theexhibitions. Based on an iterative reflexive process whereby the empirical datain the form of exhibits at the Estonian National Museum and literature are in acircular dialogue with each other, we look at the potential role of the digitalexhibits by using analytical dimensions, which have been strategically, althoughnot always consciously utilized in the exhibition development. We start with 1)Spatiality, involving potentials and limitations of space-bound digital elements,and 2) Temporality, concerning dilemma between stability and changeability ofthe content. Next, approaching digital exhibits from the perspective of 3)private-public dimension as well as 4) single-multi-user aspects allows for abetter understanding of the previously discussed sociability dimension [1, 3]. 5)Increasingly, narrating the past depends on the fusion of fictional-documentaryformats. Finally, considering the critical perspective, we will also look at thedimensions of 6) authoritative-collaborative voice and 7) openness or determinednessof the interpretation. Outlining some of the theoretical underpinningsthrough concrete examples, we argue for the heuristic value of these dimensionsin understanding visitor engagement.

Most research on gender and digital communication centers on how women use digital media, how they participate online, or how they are treated in online forums and social media. This article, in contrast, approaches gender from a behind the screen perspective. How algorithms and platforms are created, designed, and maintained, the affordances they provide for users and how they govern the ways users communicate with each other, has a major impact on digital communication. However, it is mostly men who create these technologies. Our study approaches technologies as socio-cultural, departing from the concept of network media logic. Empirically, it is based on (1) the review of a diverse body of literature from the history of programming, professional sociology, and computer science and documents such as the diversity reports from tech giants, as well as on (2) 64 semi-structured expert interviews conducted with male and female programmers in seven countries over a time-period of four years. Results show that the gender gap continues to run deep. We report results in four dimensions: professional culture, pervasive stereotypes, lack of role models and typical career paths.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are significantly progressing, especially to external affordances caused by Covid-19. Digital assets are an opportunity during the pandemic to secure social distance and enhance the students’ learning experience at the same time. Also, student administration might benefit from new digitally-enhanced opportunities. There is no uniform procedure for the use of digital media in teaching and student services. Thus, HEIs need to ascertain students’ attitudes toward the technologies used. To compare attitudes before and during the pandemic, we surveyed students about their perceptions. The first round of surveys was completed in a blended learning setting in fall 2019 before the global pandemic of Covid-19. The second round was conducted in an online learning setting in February 2021 after nearly one year of higher education under Covid-19. Our results show that students’ perceptions toward digitalization at HEIs differ in many aspects due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Students during the pandemic are more critical of the effects on their learning success. The study indicates that the adoption has taken place more quickly in the area of services. Still, teaching concepts and the learning culture lag behind.

What if things had a voice? What if we could talk directly to things instead of using a mediating voice interface such as an Alexa or a Google Assistant? In this paper, we share our insights from talking to a pair of boots, a tampon, a perfume bottle, and toilet paper among other everyday things to explore their conversational capabilities. We conducted Thing Interviews using a more-than-human design approach to discover a thing’s perspectives, worldviews and its relations to other humans and nonhumans. Based on our analysis of the speculative conversations, we identified some themes characterizing the emergent qualities of people’s relationships with everyday things. We believe the themes presented in the paper may inspire future research on designing everyday things with conversational capabilities at home.

In recent years design with augmented reality applications for cultural heritage purposes have increased and their usefulness for informal learning and tourist experiences is improving (Haugstvedt and Krogstie, 2012; Liestøl 2014). However, there are still significant challenges with using Augmented Reality technology for cultural heritage applications in open urban environments using GPS location. Even if the potential for rich experiences is great, the continued lack of precision of available GPS location and direction in smart phones create particular challenges for the interaction and experience design. This paper presents the experiences from a project that underwent several iterations in 2017 and 2018, using mobile Augmented Reality and 360 panoramic photography in a mobile application that foregrounded historical narratives in urban heritage environments. Specifically, the narratives were about the colonial past in the Danish capital Copenhagen, a past whose traces are still present in the architecture and history of noted places such as the famous Tivoli in the city as well as in archives and museums. This contested and fragmented colonial past live in digital archives that require design and exhibition practices in order to find their way to a larger audience. 

Our project Finding Alberta was one such intervention. The extended reality (XR) web-based application, using a now depreciated platform called Argon (Speiginer et al 2015) but which was created using web programming and therefore is transferable, was part of a larger set of experiences, workshops and installations that brought to life black persons who were once taken to Denmark from the Virgin Islands, then under Danish rule. The point of the urban AR experience was to let the visitor follow in the footsteps of two children - Victor and Alberta - in order to better comprehend their lives and ultimately their fate in Denmark, from the human exhibition to early death of Alberta in 1917. However, the difficulty of properly leading visitors to GPS points and understand fully in what directions they are facing once they reach those points proved a design challenge that we were only partially able to successfully work around. This paper presents some of the design choices we made in order to still create a compelling experience while working around the limits of the affordances of mobile AR.

The article explores how academic and arts-based research have been combined in curating the contemporary, media-rich exhibition The Time of Freedoms, which is part of the permanent exhibition of the Estonian National Museum. The article shows how the success of exhibition-making practice depends on the skill of switching codes from the more strictly procedure-oriented sociological/ethnological, to an arts-based approach that relies on being processual and performative. After contextualizing the exhibition and positioning the curatorial team, the article discusses three parts/exhibits of The Time of Freedoms exhibition: The Sacrifice Stone and ATM, the Synthesiser of Freedom and the Stories about Freedom. These vignettes are then used to discuss the roles of arts-based research in this exhibition design process and outcome.

This article attends to age stereotypes and ageism in contemporary tech. In academia, little attention has been devoted to this topic. Therefore, we intend to initiate a discussion around ageism in tech by studying perceptions of age in the tech industry. Our study is based on interviews with 18 tech workers around the world of varying age. According to our interviewees, tech workers over 35 are considered old in the tech industry. Older tech workers are expected to become managers, thought to become less interested in new technology, and expected to have more challenges when learning new software. We also look at how tech workers of different age groups experience entrepreneurial values of the company as a playground, staying hungry, and changing the future with technology, and how these values influence their professional careers. We conclude that ageism is reinforced in contemporary tech through several stereotypes related to age.

We report here on an application of reality media(virtual and augmented reality) to digital culturalheritage. The particular challenge we address is:how to combine VR and AR to bridge the gap betweenthe center (the museum housing cultural artifacts)and periphery (the heritage site where theartifacts were found) while at the same time attendingto, even enhancing, the aura of both artifacts andsites? Our proposed solution is to implement thecultural heritage technique known as situated simulation(sitsim) in combination with a social virtual environmentcalled Hubs. Our case study is a sitsim ofthe Acropolis in Athens, which can function on locationand remotely and offers real-time conferencingcapabilities for its participants.

The article discusses modes of reading that emerge from reading situationsthat involve literary digital interfaces and digital audiobooks. Building onanalyses of sensorial characteristics of the act of reading a digital audiobook and aliterary digital app, respectively, the article presents and defines the concept of multisensoryreading. This concept emphasizes the literary work’s material and performative features, as well as the experienced reading situation. The authors explore how the digital literary interface changes reading situations and argue that newreading habits create a need to renegotiate what it means to read in a digital age.In particular, sensory aspects can be understood as integrally involved in what theyterm the digital reading condition.

Digital transformation (DT) describes technology-based improvements in business processes, business models, and customer experience. It promises efficiency gains for industrial enterprises. Nonprofit organizations also expect advantages from DT. However, barriers hinder realizing all its possible advantages in both sectors. If decision-makers recognize the potential barriers, they can reflect upon these challenges and take well-coordinated countermeasures. Orienting towards a Straussian grounded theory approach, a framework of barriers is developed with data of two diverse sectors: industry and nonprofit. According to the framework pre-conditions such as profit-orientation and size shape the possibilities to tackle different barriers. In general, the DT process in the industry-sector has been slowed down by barriers. Whereas, nonprofit organizations often take the view that they are not in a DT process at all. This might be due to limited individual and organizational perspectives. Especially, NPOs have to work on their recruitment of skilled volunteers to challenge this view.

Sociotechnical and sociomaterial perspectives are tools for research on Information System. As Digital Transformation is a research area related to IS, this paper takes these two perspectives into account for a literature review. The explicit use of both perspectives is rather limited. Still, sociotechnical is the broader perspective. A call for more sociomateriality in research on Digital Transformation is the aim of this reflection paper.

For the third time in a row, HICSS is hosting the minitrack Making Digital Transformation Real. We received six submissions from 16 authors. Mainly, authors are affiliated with European research institutions. Also, we received submissions from authors affiliated with South African and Canadian research institutions. This year, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we received fewer submissions than expected. Topic- wise, the focus is clearly on the development of frameworks and the setting-up of propositions. We use a framework by Vial to classify the three selected submissions. Through the lens of the framework, there is an orientation towards research on structure and value creation. For the future, there is the need to develop more specific hypotheses for testing. Research on other areas of Vial’s framework, such as strategy and impact, is needed.

What if we began to speculate that intelligent things have an ethical agenda? Could we then imagine ways to move past the moral divide ‘human vs. nonhuman’ in those contexts, where things act on our behalf? Would this help us better address matters of agency and responsibility in the design and use of intelligent systems? In this article, we argue that if we fail to address intelligent things as objects that deserve moral consideration by their relations within a broad social context, we will lack a grip on the distinct ethical rules governing our interaction with intelligent things, and how to design for it. We report insights from a workshop, where we take seriously the perspectives offered by intelligent things, by allowing unforeseen ethical situations to emerge in an improvisatory manner. By giving intelligent things an active role in interaction, our participants seemed to be activated by the artifacts, provoked to act and respond to things beyond the artifact itself—its direct functionality and user experience. The workshop helped to consider autonomous behavior not as a simplistic exercise of anthropomorphization, but within the more significant ecosystems of relations, practices and values of which intelligent things are a part.

With the rise of digital technologies, digital transformation (DT) has become an issue in nearly all industries. In enterprises, DT means to digitalize internal processes, offer digital services as well as products, and enhance the customer experience. As the transformation is complex, barriers hinder the successful transformation. However, an instrument for the measurement of barriers and their effects on the DT of an organization is missing. Our research questions are therefore: What are the barriers to DT in industry and industry-related areas? How can they be described and measured?

Research on barriers to Digital Transformation (DT) in German non-digitally born (NDB) companies exists. This existing research could potentially be extended into different directions to validate and contrast results. We have chosen to continue the current research into Barriers to DT in Turkish digitally born (DB) companies. As a country, Turkey has a lower degree of digitalization than Germany. At the same time, DB companies might face fewer obstacles within their DT journey than NDB companies.

The digitalization of higher education institutions is progressing significantly. Though the use of digital assets enhances the students’ learning experience and offers new opportunities for administration, there are no uniform standards for the use of digital media in teaching and student services. As educational service providers, universities are dependent on students being able to cope with the structures offered. Thus it is essential to ascertain students’ attitudes of the technologies used. We asked students from three blended learning courses about their perceptions. We further asked the students what should be done and by whom. Our results show that students see structural changes occurring not only in themselves but also at the level of the university management. Our research contributes to the actual discussion about the digitalization of higher education by offeringsuggestions for development from a students’ view. The results are valuable for lecturers and faculty managers who want to advance the digitalization of services and learning.

This chapter attends to the interactions between campaigning politicians and traditional news media in an online space of social networking. Studying campaigning Parliamentarians on Twitter during the 2014 Swedish election, traditional news media and their online presences represented a form of authority. The interactions were often charged with emotions and could be understood as a way to negotiate status and group (party) belonging, something that is particularly important for campaigning politicians in a party-based democracy like Sweden. By studying the interactions between Parliamentarians and traditional news media, the study concludes that Parliamentarians were expected to be angry and upset with political opponents in front of their party comrades. Hence the mass media logic of conflict is transferred online and also with network media logic, favouring attention-maximising, witty one-liners. This foregrounds polarisation and dissent at the expense of discussion and debate.

In this article we describe the rise of a data orthodoxy that we suggest to label ‘data-essentialism’. We question this data-essentialism by problematizing its premises, and unveil its ideological indebtedness to deeper (previous) currents in Western thought and history. Data-essentialism is the assumption that data is the essence of basically everything, and thus provides the ideological underpinnings for the imagination of creating an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that would transform the human race and our existence. The imagination of data as an essence is in contrast to, while often conflated with, ideas of data as traces we leave behind existing in highly connected societies. This confusion over what data is, and can be used for, underlines the importance to engage in questions of the nature of data, whether everything in the universe can be described in terms of data and the implications of subscribing to such a data-essentialist worldview. We connect data-essentialism to a revival of positivism, critique a belief in the objectivity of data and that predictions based on data correlations can be fully accurate. We end the article with a discussion of how some aspects of AI rely on data-essentialist accounts and how these have a history and roots in Modernity.

This article discusses how different forms of autoethnographic production prompted by diverse forms of academic self-expression can lead to different types of knowing. Utilizing five examples from the Massive_Microscopic project, where participants responded to 21 different prompts inviting autoethnographic reflections about COVID-19 global pandemic, the article explores the responses from the perspective of alternative ways of knowing, reflecting on questions of motherhood, self-care, and performance in academia. Whether visual, rhythmic, or text produced from the perspective of things, the different modalities of the prompts allowed unexpected knowledge to emerge and supported deeper and more colorful reflections. Exploring the personal experience with the pandemic is expanded by the qualitative inquiry supported by different (self-)expression formats.

The article aims to enhance the understanding of audience engagement and ways of its shaping in relation to permanent expositions by using the example of Tartu University Natural History Museum. We focus on the role of exhibition curators as content creators in the shaping of audience engagement. The study is informed by constructivist grounded theory and draws upon eleven semi-structured interviews with the curators of the new permanent exhibition of Tartu University Natural History Museum. In order to understand better the curators’ perspectives our analysis relies on the concept of imagined audiences and seeks to answer questions about what kind of engagement modes can be identified from the curators’ comments and what processes the latter were influenced by. The theme of museum audiences and engagement modes should already be familiar to the reader from previous Yearbooks of the Estonian National Museum (Runnel ja Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt 2012; Runnel, Lepik, Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt 2014; Lotina 2014; Rattus 2016). Earlier discussions, however, placed more emphasis to the existence of audiences and engagement modes, and were less concerned with how curatorial considerations can impact the formation of audience engagement and how this formative process may be directed. Furthermore, the earlier in-depth identification of engagement modes and examination of the interrelationships between their various aspects was underpinned by a holistic view on museum activities (Lotina 2016), while the present treatment focuses on the specific context of museum expositions. The concept of imagined audiences (Litt 2012) draws on the study of social media, but for this article we have applied its principles to a museum exposition, which is a far more static communicative environment. 40 The study answered the questions about the kind of audiences the curators who put together the permanent exhibition of Tartu University Museum of Natural History were envisioning and what factors influenced the construction of audiences as well as what engagement modes were designed for the exposition. Individuals and institutions were distinguished among the audiences, both of which were in turn comprised of more detailed groups. Building on Gidden’s theory of structuration (1984) and Litt’s notion of an imagined audience (Litt 2012) the factors influencing the curators were grouped as either structural or agential. The following modes of engagement with the permanent display emerged: teaching, attracting interest, co-operation and provisions for stakeholders. Teaching was closely interlinked with the main objective of renewing the permanent display: the intent is to create a learning environment for non-formal environmental education, and in this respect it resembled the informing mode of audience engagement identified by Lotina (2016). Attracting interest was a mode of engagement which bore similarities to the marketing engagement mode previously described by Lotina (2016). Co-operation where visitors contribute towards the fulfillment of the museum’s objectives offered limited possibilities within the context of the permanent exhibition, but it holds considerable potential in the planning of future developments of the exposition. Providing for stakeholders was reflected in the museum’s consideration of the stakeholders’ needs, and it allows the museum to develop various services. All in all, both museums and their permanent displays offer valuable material for analysing the way in which audiences and their engagement modes are shaped. A better understanding of these processes will help us expand the possibilities of engaging actual audiences. Identifying messages, audiences and activities is a natural part of the planning of any permanent exhibition; however, the content creators’ visions of the upcoming exhibition also merit a detailed examination, and thereby particular factors that favour or constrain curatorial creativity will become clearer.

Inspired by Coleman's call for a more 'direct representation', we address two neglected issues within the field of social media and political communication. We study a nonelection period in Sweden (two randomly selected weeks in early 2016) and conduct a cross-platform comparison. The article is based on content analyses of the four prominent social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. We seek to answer the following questions: do parties use social media platforms in-between elections? If so, for what purposes? Do parties use social media to interact in a direct manner with citizens? We focus on three different Swedish parties: the Social Democrats (incumbent), the Feminist Initiative (underdog) and the Sweden Democrats (populist right-wing). Our findings suggest a bleak direct representation in-between elections. Parties are more active on social media platforms during election campaigns. Twitter is the preferred platform, especially by the incumbent party for broadcasting achievements.

In this article, the authors examine the aesthetics of immersion in two emerging media forms: 360° video and 3D VR. Their goal is to move beyond addressing technical affordances, to consider the techniques and choices that producers of 360° video and 3D VR are making to exploit these affordances, and what resulting effects those viewing experiences have. They discuss the tension between transparency and reflectivity in two contrasting examples, in particular: the Danish company Makropol’s Anthropia (2017) and Arora and Unseld’s The Day the World Changed (2018). The authors argue that technical affordances are part of a complex process of mediation that includes both experimentation with the technology at hand and a reliance on earlier media forms. It is critical, they argue, to understand the creative tension between established forms and new ones that underscore new aesthetic and narrative experiences in VR and 360° formats.

Companies expect significant long-term gains in efficiency and productivity through digital transformation (DT). New ways of combining products, processes, and data-driven services, as well as new business models emerge. However, the rapid development of the DT leads to constraints regarding its realization. Barriers hinder companies to realize possible advantages out of DT. If firms promptly recognize potential barriers, they can reflect upon these challenges and can take well-coordinated countermeasures. Social, technical and socio-technical problems address different stakeholders and ask for specific solutions. Therefore, our study aims at developing a taxonomy for barriers to DT to enable researchers and practitioners to identify and classify existing barriers. For deriving the dimensions and characteristics, we collected data by conducting 46 semi-structured interviews with experts and enriched these by looking at the literature on DT barriers.

Digital Transformation (DT) is expected to have a massive impact on different branches and even societies. In the manufacturing industry, value creation processes change as information and communication technologies merge with production processes. The change may enable efficiency gains and new business models. However, many firms still struggle to drive their digital transformation forward. To understand the barriers which hinder or even stop DT is essential for the successful transformation. Our study aims at identifying the barriers on the basis of 46 expert interviews. These practical insights are further used to develop a research agenda. To determine the research gaps, we conduct a literature review on the topics mentioned by the interviewees. Thus, we contribute by first of all identifying major barriers which can support firms by reflecting their DT. Moreover, we give an outlook for researchers on possible future exploration. So, we bring together perspectives from research and practice.

Digital Transformation (DT) is based on superior connectivity and in an explosion of available data, changing the way enterprises do business. This frequently implies the development of new strategies, new business models and new capabilities. By proposing the mini-track Making Digital Transformation Real, the objective is to put forward new ideas about how companies, managers, and individuals are dealing with the complexity around this phenomenon. Papers selected highlight challenges and opportunities for large, small, and medium companies from different sectors. In this editorial, after presenting a short introduction to the topic, different contributions are briefly presented to offer a snapshot of this mini-track.