Pablo Velasco pablov.me & Midas Nouwens // Information Studies
https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lm-VFRo=/?invite_link_id=434428915736
What was the most (internally (i.e., coming from them)/externally (i.e., coming from the outside world)) challenging aspect of the mini-project?
What was the most surprising aspect of the project?
How confident are you that what you 'found' in the data is an accurate reflection of 'reality'?
If there is one thing you could tell yourself before starting the mini-project, what would it be?
MENTI: https://www.menti.com/ko3pe6mwkz
code "9992 6280"
Berry, D. M. (2011). The Computational Turn: Thinking About the Digital Humanities
Importance of devices as both:
Ruppert, E., Law, J., & Savage, M. (2013). Reassembling social science methods: The challenge of digital devices
"These [computational] subtractive methods of understanding reality (episteme) produce new knowledges and methods for the control of reality (techne)"
Berry, D. M. (2011). The Computational Turn: Thinking About the Digital Humanities
Need to develop methodological frameworks to reflexively account for the strengths and weaknesses of both the technical practices and the claims produced through computational systems
Elish, M. C., & boyd, danah. (2018). Situating methods in the magic of Big Data and AI. Communication Monographs
That is, methods indicate not only the application of computational/statistical methods to social/humanistic/cultural fields, but a also a contestation of the pertinence of such methods and methodological devices, as well as a reflection on their effects in social research
Medium/platforms have their own implicit epistemologies and ontologies (what can be and what how it can be known), thus a methodological approach requires a high degree of criticism and adaptation.
Not (only) what digital devices reveal, but how they produce and perform the social, asking for example, not:
Which percentage of twitter users believe in x?
but
How digital practices & objects (of twitter) ground cultural representations/expressions of x?
"quantitative curation for qualitative analysis"
(btw, see this Friday lecture)
digital objects use is not equivalent across platforms
how does the platform affect the availability of content, and what stories do the content tell, given platform effects?"
Rogers, R. (2019). Doing Digital Methods. SAGE Publications Ltd.
This question is even more relevant with the emergence of alt-platforms (parler, mastodon, "truth").
Safra, L., Chevallier, C., Grèzes, J., & Baumard, N. (2020). Tracking historical changes in trustworthiness using machine learning analyses of facial cues in paintings
The "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything"
Calculated over a period of 7.5 million years
(The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)