## <span class="censor">Data Subjects 2022 <br>// S01: Introductory session</span>
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<img src="https://i.imgur.com/yM3C38b.jpg" width="80%">
Pablo Velasco // Information Studies // [pablov.me](https://pablov.me)
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# LET'S TALK ABOUT COVID19 (AGAIN)
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### Key excerpts from [academic regulation](https://eddiprod.au.dk/EDDI/webservices/DokOrdningService.cfc?method=visGodkendtOrdning&dokOrdningId=16722&sprog=en)
In the evaluation of the student’s performance, emphasis is placed on the extent to which the student is able to:
Knowledge:
* describe and **discuss theories, concepts and methods for investigating the role of data in relation to the formation of the subject**
* **critically reflect** on the relation between data and subjectivity.
Skills:
* **analyse and discuss** the relation between data and subjectivity in general and in specific cases
* communicate about the relation between data and subjectivity in general and in specific cases.
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### What is this course about?
* The course focuses on the individual as a **user and producer of data**, **but also as** **shaped by data**. The course focuses on the various practices and technologies by which we as individual persons produce data and **how data shapes our understanding of ourselves** and our subjectivity and affects how we live.
* By focusing on the use practices of devices and technologies such as **social media, mobile devices, apps, geolocation, sensors, state governed and private information systems** etc., **the students will learn to investigate and analyse these practices and their consequences for the subjectivity** of the user. The students will explore phenomena and technologies such as **filter bubbles, echo chambers, recommender systems, quantified self, tracking, data doubles, surveillance and dataveillance**.
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### Ok, but why to study data subjects?
* There is a significant need for awareness in relation to data practices and modes of production for digital subjectivities
* Digital rights is a growing field with significant challenges regarding identity, ownership, and responsibility
* More in-depth qualitative policy that considers technology design embedded with social readings is needed
* Too much tech is used without clear purposes, yet it growingly redefines our social life and notions of identity, bodies, roles, and behaviour.
<!--How has the self become a media object? How is our sense of identity created and displayed publicly? What are the consequences? How do networked technologies affect identity presentation and social interaction? How is the ‘edited self’ displayed in public? What happens when average people can influence large audiences through social networking platforms? SOURCE-->
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## Topics on data subjects
* The modern subject
* Digital identity
* Quantification of the self
* Biopolitical (digital) subject
* Digital citizen
* Situated subjects I: the south
* The subject of surveillance capitalism
* Situated subjects II: the alt
* The posthuman
* Situated subjects III: the organic other(s)
* Situated subjects IV: the technical other(s)
* Narrated subjects
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## Course structure
### Groups and exam
Central point of information in our [syllabus homepage in brightspace](https://brightspace.au.dk/d2l/le/lessons/49301/units/826334). Slides can be found on the calendar section (slides can be downloaded as pdfs, too)
### Exam
* 7-day take-home
* can be done in groups or individually
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[<span style="font-size:4em">who are you?</span>](https://aarhusuniversitet-my.sharepoint.com/:x:/g/personal/au615724_uni_au_dk/EZI6i8sabxdMlxAjbpFZ9yUB_Jc5RBYsAb2kGXGY0yW8Sw?e=g97Dau)
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<img src="https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f4/b8/c5/f4b8c5a6af18e9389d6b5c9209fd13d8.gif" width="40%">
***Who am I?***
self, identity, subject
***Where am I?***
body, mirror (reflection), neurons, soul, stories
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* JAD: Right, the vocabulary of a neuron is just **on or off**.
* ROBERT: It is **only in the group that you can see the electrical outline of a thought, or ultimately of a self**. While you think of yourself as a one, even the thought "I am a one," springs from a hundred million cells connecting through a trillion synapses. And that all of this multiple activity paradoxically creates the you of this moment. **You are always plural**.
<small>Radiolab "Who am I?" https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/91496-who-am-i</small>
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### CDS should study *data-assemblages*
<span class="censor">*the technological, political, social, and econmic apparatuses and elements that constitutes and frames the generation, circulation and deployment of data* (Kitchin and Lauriault 2014)</span>
Education for the *common good* (Iliadis and Lauriault 2016)
1. Identification of social data problems
2. Design of critical frameworks for addressing social data problems
3. Application of social solutions to increase data literacy
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## Goriunova's (2019) Digital Subject
### "digital subject" != "living people"
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<i>What exactly is this digital entity that she identified as me? What relation does it have to me? How do I relate to it? How is it able to stand in for me and construct a me that attracts advertisements and thus alters me, while still being reliant on my activity? How is it produced outside of my awareness, mobilized, and recruited? It is clearly not I, and yet it is no one other than I. What other ‘I’s are out there, labouring in the legal, medical, industrial, and aesthetic spheres?</i></span>
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### between critical theory and *big-data* data analytics
<img src="https://i.imgur.com/ZUIIPPr.png" width="80%">
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### Distance
## <span class="censor">A digital subject is neither an object nor its representation but a distance between the two (128)</span>
* non-empty
* elastic
* not a person (in one end)
<!-- bikes, ip addressess, dogs and horses-->
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<small>https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/31/website_fine_google_fonts_gdpr/</small>
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* How this *distance* is performed changes and enacts different politics
<span class="censor">the forms of production of distance, whether by neural networks, platform infrastructures, projects or other engagements are key to the generation of digital subjects (128)</span>
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