While a substantial body of research has explored the intricate relationship between journalists and metrics, there remains a notable gap in systematically understanding how evolving metrics over time influence journalists’ use of data as feedback. This study addresses this gap by investigating how alterations in the most valued metrics influence the utilisation of audience data for reflection and feedback in national and local newsrooms. The study spans multiple waves from 2012 to 2023 and comprises 72 interviews with Estonian journalists. It employs the Data Loop framework to analyse the circulation of audience data among media institutions, audiences, newsrooms, and individual journalists’ reflexive actions. Examining data reflexivity within newsrooms involves considering the interplay between newsroom culture, metrics-gathering technology, external pressures from changing business models, and journalistic agency. Over time, the metrics valued by newsroom managers have shifted – from prioritising clicks as a measure of audience interest to rewarding journalists based on minutes spent on stories or the acquisition of subscriptions. In this article, we argue that instead of considering the audiences behind the data, journalists and editors mostly use the data offered by metrics to reflect on their work. Noteworthy trends include journalists conforming to data dominance and shaping their work to align with prevailing metrics, particularly in the context of paywalls where individual article readership can be linked with direct income through subscriptions. Contextualising newsroom data within the Data Loop, this study illustrates how data serves as a source for reflections at both the individual and newsroom culture levels. Despite assertions of an audience turn, our findings indicate that a focus on metrics does not necessarily signify a focus on the audience but rather an unwavering interest in journalistic production.

This introductory chapter presents an overview and a synthesis of the chapters in the The De Gruyter Handbook of Automated Futures. Divided into sections on Imaginaries, Interactions, and Impact, the handbook presents a research agenda that explores futures, automation, and change from social scientific perspectives. These sections serve as heuristic sites for reframing narratives on automation, investigating human and algorithmic interactions, and exploring engaging ways for the social sciences, humanities, and design to participate in shaping automated futures. The Imaginaries section deconstructs dominant narratives of automated futures, emphasising historical antecedents and ideological tensions. Interactions delve into the complex dynamics between humans and automated systems, highlighting strategies to infuse automation with human dimensions and promote inclusivity. Impact focuses on making automated futures sustainable and ethical, advocating for innovative methodologies and interdisciplinary collaboration. Finally, this chapter offers insights into how the handbook can inspire into envisioning, understanding, and shaping automated futures in a playful and designerly manner. It encourages critical reflection, ethical engagement, and participatory approaches to ensure the development of inclusive, equitable, and sustainable automation futures.

How does automation affect us, our environment, and our imaginations? What actions should we take in response to automation? Beyond grand narratives and technology-driven visions of the future, what more can automation offer?

With these questions in mind, The De Gruyter Handbook of Automated Futures provides a framework for thinking about and implementing automation differently. It consolidates automated futures as an inter- and transdisciplinary research field, embedding the imaginaries, interactions, and impacts of automation technology within their social, historical, societal, cultural, and political contexts. Promoting a critical yet constructive and engaging agenda, the handbook invites readers to collaborate with rather than resist automation agendas. It does so by pushing the agenda for social science, humanities and design beyond merely assessing and evaluating existing technologies. Instead, the handbook demonstrates how the humanities and social sciences are essential to the design and governance of sustainable sociotechnical systems. Methodologically, the handbook is underpinned by a pedagogical approach to staging co-learning and co-creation of automated futures with, rather than simply for, people. In this way, the handbook encourages readers to explore new and alternative modes of research, fostering a deeper engagement with the evolving landscape of automation. 

In the realm of Swedish public administration, there is a growing recognition of automation as a fertile ground for innovation and efficiency. This paper, drawing upon ethnographic research with key stakeholders in Swedish municipalities, investigates how the public sector is responding to an anticipated demographic crisis, with a particular focus on the challenges presented by an ageing population. It critically examines the dual role of automation, especially Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Generative AI, perceived simultaneously as a comprehensive remedy and a makeshift solution. Central to this exploration are two predominant themes: firstly, the urgent necessity to rejuvenate the public sector through automation to prevent an impending collapse, and secondly, the need to adapt current work practices to an automated yet unpredictable future. This paper posits that automation represents a continuous journey of adaptation, rather than a definitive endpoint. This journey is metaphorically likened to ongoing repair work, where automation technologies function as flexible, 'duct-tape' solutions, continually extending the horizons of what is possible in public administration. The analysis delves into the transformative role of automation, arguing that its impact goes beyond the mere reduction of human labour. Instead, automation is seen as a catalyst for organisational change, promoting standardisation and challenging the entrenched norms of individualised work methods. In conclusion, this paper demonstrates how the use of metaphors related to breakage and repair can be used to understand the public sector's organisational transformation. It offers insights into how the anticipated futures of automation are shaping the future of public administration in Sweden, not just as a tool for efficiency, but as a key driver of organisational evolution and adaptation.

Sweden is increasingly considering the possibility of automating public administration. Data-driven process automation is believed to help make administrative tasks more efficient and goal-driven. However, implementing these systems, or preparing for their implementation, involves a transformation in organisational practices and principles. These practices are adapted to imaginaries of automation technologies, often stemming from the digital industries. When the organisational logic of public administration clashes with the promises of emerging automation technologies, new organisational forms and temporalities take shape, here referred to as click-level bureaucracy and duct-tape solutionism.

Based on digital ethnographic research with stakeholders from approximately ten Swedish municipalities, this paper explores how these new organisational forms and temporalities take shape. Two central and interrelated ideas anchor this exploration. Firstly, the future will necessitate automation to prevent the public sector from collapsing as it is perceived as dysfunctional and in need of repair. Secondly, we must prepare for an automated future by transforming today's work forms and routines to be compatible with machine communication when needed.

The interaction between these two lines of thought reveals that preparations involve constant repair work, yet these efforts are rarely deemed satisfactory. Instead, they become temporary, makeshift solutions that continually defer the anticipated future. In this sense, repair becomes a form of future-making where the future is persistently delayed, making it a perpetually moving target while at the same time building up a new form of bureaucracy that requires novel competencies and forms of management that necessarily involves representation from the digital industries.

This paper discusses the "Collaborative Foresight" process, which is an initiative organized by the authors in partnership with Media Evolution, a Swedish organization based in Malmö. The foresight cycle in focus aimed to explore potential futures of work with emerging AI technologies by engaging a diverse group of experts and community members in forecasting and “futuring” activities, following the methodology offered by Media Evolution. The authors actively participated in this cycle, which allowed for a thorough examination of the methodologies utilized in such foresight exercises.

At the heart of our investigation is the dynamic tension between "future-makers" - those actively shaping possible futures, and "future-takers" - individuals adapting to these projected scenarios. Our study explores how the interplay and evolving tensions between these roles are influenced by the structure of foresight practice and the facilitator's practices. We investigate how this approach fosters a participatory environment where participants are encouraged to not only predict but also contribute actively to the creation of future work paradigms within the boundaries of the foresight cycle structure.

Our analysis focuses on the methodology of the foresight cycle, highlighting its role as a facilitative and inhibitory tool that requires participants to oscillate between the imaginative realms of future-making and the practicalities of future-taking. The research illuminates the importance of questioning initiatives such as collaborative foresighting and their role in shaping industry narratives about the future of work.

Digital Transformation (DT) is gaining traction across all industries. Also, it impacts other sectors, such as non-profit and higher education. DT emerges when connectivity technologies merge with physical assets, potentially affecting value-generating processes and value propositions. These changes will improve effectiveness, business models, and customer relationships. However, firms confront several barriers when they embark on their DT journey. Thus, it is essential to understand how the barriers can be tackled by countermeasures. Understanding the qualities of these countermeasures is critical for businesses to overcome barriers. Thus, this current study searches for similarities and differences across socio-demographic categories representing company size (LE, MLE, SME), level of responsibility (executive, with and without personal responsibility), and age (under 30, 31-40, 41-50, above 50). Data from online surveys revealed 1171 participants’ statements. These were used to extract four dimensions and 39 countermeasures. The most prominent countermeasure dimensions are Human and Organisation. The most prominent countermeasures relate to the education of employees in the form of demand-oriented training and benefits and needs of DT. This research adds to identifying similarities across categories and paves the way for greater generalizability of countermeasures.

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 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.

With the proliferation of contemporary digital technologies, Digital Transformation (DT) has become a significant theme for companies across almost all industries. DT encompasses the digitalization of internal processes, the provision of digital services and products, and the enhancement of the customer experience. Previous research has delved into different barriers that impede successful DT. In our study, we investigate further how these barriers are perceived by employees at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in contrast to larger enterprises (LEs). We employ a mixed-methods approach by performing a quantitative analysis using the Means, Mann-Whitney U test with effect size and integrating it with qualitative results converted into frequencies. Our empirical data consist of two samples consisting of participants from 189 SMEs and 221 LEs for quantitative analysis and participants from 238 SMEs and 281 LEs for qualitative analysis. Overall, the results suggest a relatively similar perception of DT processes, indicating culture and structure as major barriers. However, the establishment of resources dedicated to managing DT emerges as a vaster barrier for SMEs than for LEs. At the same time, SMEs face fewer barriers regarding general personnel resources.

Despite the growing interest in how digital technologies affect work life, there is still a need for in-depth research and policy work that scrutinize where, by whom, and how the anticipated work futures are shaped and appropriated. Who sets the agenda for the future of work, and how are these images about the future of work with digital technologies created and negotiated? More importantly, where does this occur? There are key moments at a handful of globally influential 'first places' where the ideas and inventions for the digital future of work are shown and explored. These nascent ideas quickly set expectations as industries, communities, organizations, and individuals adopt and further disseminate what they have learned at those pivotal sites. This paper reports from an ethnographic pilot study of a global conference that has grown into an unmissable taste-making event that sets trends and shapes the future of work through and with digital technologies: South By SouthWest (SXSW) in Austin, TX, USA. Drawing on observations and interviews with ten participants representing the digital and creative industries in Sweden, this paper shows how digital work futures are constituted through anticipatory and appropriation practices, and how a sense of belonging - based mainly on pleasures - runs through the processes and practices by which technologies, experiences, and anticipations become entangled in everyday professional environments.

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.

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.

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. 

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