Data Studies 21 // S01

Pablo Velasco (pablov.me) & Midas Nouwens (@midasnouwens)

+ Monika Mortensen
+ Jakob Adolph
+ Sine Jehle

// Information Studies @ Aarhus University

Plan for the day:

• instructors
• corona guidelines
• course structure
• data studies and survey results

BUMPY RIDE

Corona info

Course structure

• lectures

• workshops (discussion + tools and troubleshoot)

• groupwork: mini projects

• term project (starts W41) + final presentation (W49)

• exam (based on term project)

Learning outcomes:

• Knowledge:
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the role of data in society
  • Critically reflect on the use of data to conclude general conditions in the world and in digital environments
• Skills:
  • Use digital tools to collect, analyse and present data
  • Critically reflect on the production and use of data in specific cases
• Competences:
  • Critically analyse and consider the role of data in society, as well as the use and design of digital technologies for data collection and production

DS

1. What is DS?

2. What are the problems/issues DS deals with?

3. How to research data?

FIELDS inspiring or related to DS

Data Science
Data Rights/Governance
Digital Humanities
Cultural anaytics
Software Studies
Human-Computer Interaction
Science and Technology Studies
Digital Sociology

Digital Methods (Rogers 2017)

• "the deployment of online tools and data for the purposes of social and medium research"
• "indications of societal concern"
• "rethink conditions of proof"
• "inquiries into the extend to which the medium is affecting the findings"

SURVEY

"Why all these funny questions"
"Weird questionnaire"

What do you understand by "data"?

Incomplete sample

"You get 6 answers back and the responses can be considered data, which can be used for further analysis."

Irregular inputs

"Oversigt over typer af kriminalitet med årstal, placering og tidspunkt ;) "

Mention an example of "data"

"Don't put radio buttons with only two options for gender in a survey (or don't ask). 🙃 "

"Data is thus limited to how the real world can be translated into digital formats, and when extracting something in the world for datafication, certain elements, may or may not be able to be represented internally in a digital system"

"information gathered by when choices are made"
"a way to make knowledge concrete"

"Weather data. Temperature, pressure and all that jazz"

"Big chunks of information stored in different ways and through different programs and ways. Incredibly difficult to datafy everything"

"a series of simple symbols that, when strung together and given context can say something about pretty much anything"

"Messenger (i don't know if it counts)"

"that webpages track and see which items and how long we look at an item in order to provide other suggestions for that kind of product that has caught your intrest"

"Also Data can be misused if it comes into the wrong hands"

"Data is every character we have ever writen, every click we ave ever made, every word we have ever said and recorded. Everything around us is data."

"numbers"

"an attempt to quantify natural phenomenons"

"I hope the programming will not be too challenging:) "

"I hope that even though programming isnt my bestfriend that I'll still enjoy the course"

A (SHORT) NOTE ON ETHICS

"Au has a lot of data about me, such as my birthday, name, and so on. This data about me is a set of data. Also when i submit this survey, i submit a set of data about myself."

GDPR (basics for "data collectors")

Processing (articles 4 and 6):

“collection, recording, organisation, structuring, storage, adaptation or alteration, retrieval, consultation, use, disclosure by transmission, dissemination or otherwise making available, alignment or combination, restriction, erasure or destruction“

"Personal information, such as cpr, adress and phone number"

• Personal data (mainly articles 2, 4, 5): identifiable or re-identifiable
  • a name and surname;
  • a home address;
  • an email address such as name.surname@company.com;
  • an identification card number;
  • location data (for example the location data function on a mobile phone);
  • an Internet Protocol (IP) address;
  • the advertising identifier of your phone;
  • data held by a hospital or doctor, which could be a symbol that uniquely identifies a person.

• Sensitive data:
  • ethnic origin
  • political, religious, and philosophical beliefs
  • trade union affiliations
  • genetic / biometric data
  • health
  • sex life & sexual orientation

Have you ever accepted Terms of Agreements (in a website or app) without reading them?

• Is this ethical?
• Can this harm groups or individuals? Whom?
• Does this violates regulation (is this legal)? Made by whom?
• Is this legitimate?
• Who uses twitter/reddit, etc?
• Whenever we use a tool: who made this? Is my data safe? How can I know that? Is it open/close? Free for some populations? Which company is behind it?
  
  
  

DS is a hands-on approach to the life of data, i.e. a technical practice which considers contextual, ethical, political, and methodological phenomena associated with the collection, processing and presentation of data.

"A lot of data gathering right of the bat"

🥒 😊 🙈 🤗 🤩 😏 🤝 😆 🤠 🤠 😎 🏌️‍♂️
🙃 😎 ;-) 😃 :3 😎 😴 🤗 😴 😁 🍓
😎 👨🏼‍💻 🙃 🤔 🥲 😎 🤗 😁 😄 😄 🍺 🙄
🥰 🌚 🎛️ 💃 ☺️ 🤠 🥰 😆 🙆‍♂️ 👻 👍 💃

"Let´s do this baby !!"

For tomorrow:

• download and install: Chrome + Data Miner plugin
• think of a website you'd lke to scrape
• bring your name-tag