I'm a digital culture researcher, which means I do projects and write about contemporary digital technologies and their social impact. I have background in organizational theory, communication studies, interpretive research methods, chicago school ethnographic methods. I write about datafication and algorithmic identity, lived experience in digitally saturated social contexts, human-machine communication and relations, research methodologies, digital and data ethics, and critical pedagogy. Currently, I am Chair Professor of Future Literacies and Public Engagement at Utrecht University. I still hold an affiliate professor position of Information Studies at Aarhus University in Denmark. I'm also an Affiliate Professor of Digital Ethics at Loyola University in Chicago, honorary adjunct professor of Media and Communication at RMIT in Melbourne and former Director of the Digital Ethnography Research Center.
This article describes an ongoing series of public arts-based experiments that build critical cur... more This article describes an ongoing series of public arts-based experiments that build critical curiosity and develop data literacy via self-reflexive public interventions. Examined through the lens of remix methodology the Museum of Random Memory exemplifies a form of collective-reflexive meta-analysis whereby interdisciplinary researchers generate immediate social change and build better questions for future public engagement. The experiments help people critically analyze their own social lives and well being in cultural environments of growing datafication and automated (artificial intelligence [AI]-driven) decision-making. Reflexivity, bricolage, and critical pedagogy are emphasized as approaches for responding to changing needs in the public sphere that also build more robust interdisciplinary academic teams.
This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Bi... more This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Big Data Research.” Building on a variety of theoretical paradigms (i.e., critical theory, [new] materialism, feminist ethics, theory of cultural techniques) and frameworks (i.e., contextual integrity, deflationary perspective, ethics of care), the Special Issue contributes specific cases and fine-grained conceptual distinctions to ongoing discussions about the ethics in data-driven research. In the second decade of the 21st century, a grand narrative is emerging that posits knowledge derived from data analytics as true, because of the objective qualities of data, their means of collection and analysis, and the sheer size of the data set. The by-product of this grand narrative is that the qualitative aspects of behavior and experience that form the data are diminished, and the human is removed from the process of analysis. This situates data science as a process of analysis performed by the tool, which obscures human decisions in the process. The scholars involved in this Special Issue problematize the assumptions and trends in big data research and point out the crisis in accountability that emerges from using such data to make societal interventions. Our collaborators offer a range of answers to the question of how to configure ethics through a methodological framework in the context of the prevalence of big data, neural networks, and automated, algorithmic governance of much of human socia(bi)lity.
In spite of the seeming incompatibility of network analysis and a symbolic interaction approach, ... more In spite of the seeming incompatibility of network analysis and a symbolic interaction approach, we have both been drawn to some of the possibilities offered by a network sensibility. When the tools are separated from the disciplinary parameters for which they were developed (primarily Social Network Analysis, or SNA), a network sensibility offers a beguiling method for extending certain approaches, such as grounded theory, symbolic interactionism, or ethnography, and specifying other approaches, such as actor network theory or practice theory. In this essay, we make a case for embracing and critically developing network sensibilities as a way to grapple with the complexity of contemporary social media interactions. Our discussion, mostly focused at the level of method, is intended to contribute to ongoing conversations stressing the need to build conceptual and methodological frameworks that resonate more closely with the complexity of networked, technologically-mediated social contexts. To begin, we clarify the distinction between network analysis and network sensibility. We then discuss three key strengths of using network sensibilities to study the nuances of social media: (1) network practices can generate data and add complexity by producing multiple renderings of potential meaning emerging through social media; (2) the practice of creating and then juxtaposing different visualizations and potential explanations of the situation can help shift focus from objects to relations or flow; and (3) through the practice of constantly rebuilding and shifting visual mappings so different elements are centered, network analysis can become a catalyst for reflexive and ethical practice.
Critical pedagogy is a vital part of building data literacy. It moves beyond the level of data cr... more Critical pedagogy is a vital part of building data literacy. It moves beyond the level of data critique to social action in response to datafication. This article contends that academics can do more to teach those in the public sphere as well as classroom to become critical interpretive researchers of their own lived experience, an action/participatory research framework that identifies critical thinking as the purpose of research and improved digital or data literacy as the outcome of research. This article suggests three strategic modes through which the strengths of critical approaches and qualitative epistemologies can be blended to serve as pedagogical tools for understanding and critically analyzing data, datafication, and other aspects of the digital era.
The idea of doing a self-guided series of prompts for a largescale project in the midst of a glob... more The idea of doing a self-guided series of prompts for a largescale project in the midst of a global pandemic emerged as a solution to the twin problems of distance and distraction. The goal of a “21-day autoethnography challenge” set of self-guided prompts was to build embodied sensibilities toward the material we study, practice autoethnographic forms of writing and analysis, and transform personal experiences through this COVID-19 moment into critical understanding of scale, sensemaking, and relationality of humans, nonhumans, and the planet. This article showcases the prompts to illustrate the method and flexible adaptation required for the project.
This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Bi... more This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Big Data Research.” Building on a variety of theoretical paradigms (i.e., critical theory, [new] materialism, feminist ethics, theory of cultural techniques) and frameworks (i.e., contextual integrity, deflationary perspective, ethics of care), the Special Issue contributes specific cases and fine-grained conceptual distinctions to ongoing discussions about the ethics in data-driven research. In the second decade of the 21st century, a grand narrative is emerging that posits knowledge derived from data analytics as true, because of the objective qualities of data, their means of collection and analysis, and the sheer size of the data set. The by-product of this grand narrative is that the qualitative aspects of behavior and experience that form the data are diminished, and the human is removed from the process of analysis. This situates data science as a process of analysis performed by th...
Beginning with the premise that most regulatory guidelines for research ethics are deeply flawed,... more Beginning with the premise that most regulatory guidelines for research ethics are deeply flawed, this article walks the reader through three models that can help social researchers, technologists, and designers identify and reflect on how they’re approaching ethics, or “doing the right thing” in their own work. The first, an error-avoidance model, has traditionally focused on creating frameworks to help researchers avoid repeating historical ethical violations. The second concept-driven model focuses on refining the concepts that undergird core ethical frameworks. Both are dominant in human-focused research and tend to be highly proceduralized, implemented a priori or from the top down as part of largescale regulatory structures. In both of these models, the agency of the researcher is removed or dismissed as less relevant than the agency of the system. The article draws on recent controversies around data collection and corporate experimentation on social media users as well as tw...
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society - #SMSociety17, 2017
How do young people make sense of their social media experiences, which rhetoric do they use, whi... more How do young people make sense of their social media experiences, which rhetoric do they use, which grand narratives of technology and social media do they rely on? Based on discourse analysis of approximately 500 pages of written data and 390 minutes of video (generated by 50 college students aged 18-30 between 2014-2016) this article explores how young people negotiate their own experience and existing discourses about social media. Our analysis shows that young people rely heavily on canonic binaries from utopian and dystopian interpretations of networked technologies to apply labels to themselves, others, and social media in general. As they are prompted to reflect on their experience, their rhetoric about social media use and its implications becomes more nuanced yet remains inherently contradictory. This reflects a dialectical struggle to make sense of their lived experiences and feelings. Our unique methodology for generating deeply self-reflexive, auto-ethnographic narrative accounts suggests a way for scholars to be able to understand the ongoing struggles for meaning that occur within the granularity of everyday reflections about our own social media use.
Setting the Mood Weirdly, everything feels the same. There’s absolutely no distinction for me be... more Setting the Mood Weirdly, everything feels the same. There’s absolutely no distinction for me between news, work, walking, gaming, Netflix, rock collecting, scrolling, messaging. I don’t know how this happened, but everything has simply blurred together. There’s a dreadful and yet soothing sameness to it, scrolling through images on Instagram, scrolling Netflix, walking the dog, scrolling the news, time scrolling by as I watch face after face appear or disappear on my screen, all saying something, yet saying nothing. Is this the rhythm of crisis in a slow apocalypse? Really, would it be possible for humans to just bore themselves into oblivion? Because in the middle of a pandemic, boredom feels in my body the same as doom ... just another swell that passes, like my chest as it rises and falls with my breath. This opening anecdote comes from combining narratives in two studies we conducted online during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020: a global study, Massive and Microscopic Sensemaki...
Pre-publication proof copy.
Feldwork is the foundation of robust ethnographic inquiry in physic... more Pre-publication proof copy.
Feldwork is the foundation of robust ethnographic inquiry in physical settings, but the practical methods have never fit well in digital contexts. Often, online ethnographers must radically adjust or rethink activities of fieldwork, to the point where they may hardly resemble "fieldwork" anymore.This essay discusses the persistent challenges of transferring fieldwork methods intended for physically situated contexts to digitally-mediated social contexts. I offer provocations for considering the premises rather than the procedures of field-work. These may not be seen on the surface level of method but operate at a level below method, or in everyday inquiry as practice. Reverse engineering classic fieldwork tools can help reveal the reasons they were invented in the first place. Then, one can search for tools that fulfill these premises but utilize different practical techniques.
To see an official published version: Markham, A. N. (2022). The ontological insecurity of discon... more To see an official published version: Markham, A. N. (2022). The ontological insecurity of disconnecting: A theory of echolocation and the self. In Chia, A., Jorge, A., and Karppi, T. (Eds.). Reckoning with Social Media: Disconnection in the Age of the Techlash (pp forthcoming). Rowman & Littlefield.
This draft work presents a theory of sociality based on the ‘always on’ characteristics of life in the social media age. When people disconnect from the network, there can be a notable absence of the steady stream of identity pings. It can leave ‘always on’ users feeling bereft of the continual marking of boundaries of the edges of the Self. This ontology of echo-locating the Self through constant “call and response” can cause feelings of existential vulnerability or ontological insecurity, where the self, even the body, is cast into doubt. This theory of social echolocation is based in the idea that the seemingly seamless ‘always on’ state of connectivity is, at the more granular level, a process of continual echolocation, in the way we might think of radar, whereby the outline of an object in space is determined by sending a steady stream of sound signals and listening to the quality of the echo. At the micro-interactional level, we can see this constant radar pinging to find the self. The theory of sociality presented in this draft work is part of a forthcoming book on the topic. It emerges from six years of ethnographic and phenomenological study of around 1,500 youth regarding their everyday digital media.
This article describes an ongoing series of public arts-based experiments that build critical cur... more This article describes an ongoing series of public arts-based experiments that build critical curiosity and develop data literacy via self-reflexive public interventions. Examined through the lens of remix methodology the Museum of Random Memory exemplifies a form of collective-reflexive meta-analysis whereby interdisciplinary researchers generate immediate social change and build better questions for future public engagement. The experiments help people critically analyze their own social lives and well being in cultural environments of growing datafication and automated (artificial intelligence [AI]-driven) decision-making. Reflexivity, bricolage, and critical pedagogy are emphasized as approaches for responding to changing needs in the public sphere that also build more robust interdisciplinary academic teams.
This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Bi... more This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Big Data Research.” Building on a variety of theoretical paradigms (i.e., critical theory, [new] materialism, feminist ethics, theory of cultural techniques) and frameworks (i.e., contextual integrity, deflationary perspective, ethics of care), the Special Issue contributes specific cases and fine-grained conceptual distinctions to ongoing discussions about the ethics in data-driven research. In the second decade of the 21st century, a grand narrative is emerging that posits knowledge derived from data analytics as true, because of the objective qualities of data, their means of collection and analysis, and the sheer size of the data set. The by-product of this grand narrative is that the qualitative aspects of behavior and experience that form the data are diminished, and the human is removed from the process of analysis. This situates data science as a process of analysis performed by the tool, which obscures human decisions in the process. The scholars involved in this Special Issue problematize the assumptions and trends in big data research and point out the crisis in accountability that emerges from using such data to make societal interventions. Our collaborators offer a range of answers to the question of how to configure ethics through a methodological framework in the context of the prevalence of big data, neural networks, and automated, algorithmic governance of much of human socia(bi)lity.
In spite of the seeming incompatibility of network analysis and a symbolic interaction approach, ... more In spite of the seeming incompatibility of network analysis and a symbolic interaction approach, we have both been drawn to some of the possibilities offered by a network sensibility. When the tools are separated from the disciplinary parameters for which they were developed (primarily Social Network Analysis, or SNA), a network sensibility offers a beguiling method for extending certain approaches, such as grounded theory, symbolic interactionism, or ethnography, and specifying other approaches, such as actor network theory or practice theory. In this essay, we make a case for embracing and critically developing network sensibilities as a way to grapple with the complexity of contemporary social media interactions. Our discussion, mostly focused at the level of method, is intended to contribute to ongoing conversations stressing the need to build conceptual and methodological frameworks that resonate more closely with the complexity of networked, technologically-mediated social contexts. To begin, we clarify the distinction between network analysis and network sensibility. We then discuss three key strengths of using network sensibilities to study the nuances of social media: (1) network practices can generate data and add complexity by producing multiple renderings of potential meaning emerging through social media; (2) the practice of creating and then juxtaposing different visualizations and potential explanations of the situation can help shift focus from objects to relations or flow; and (3) through the practice of constantly rebuilding and shifting visual mappings so different elements are centered, network analysis can become a catalyst for reflexive and ethical practice.
Critical pedagogy is a vital part of building data literacy. It moves beyond the level of data cr... more Critical pedagogy is a vital part of building data literacy. It moves beyond the level of data critique to social action in response to datafication. This article contends that academics can do more to teach those in the public sphere as well as classroom to become critical interpretive researchers of their own lived experience, an action/participatory research framework that identifies critical thinking as the purpose of research and improved digital or data literacy as the outcome of research. This article suggests three strategic modes through which the strengths of critical approaches and qualitative epistemologies can be blended to serve as pedagogical tools for understanding and critically analyzing data, datafication, and other aspects of the digital era.
The idea of doing a self-guided series of prompts for a largescale project in the midst of a glob... more The idea of doing a self-guided series of prompts for a largescale project in the midst of a global pandemic emerged as a solution to the twin problems of distance and distraction. The goal of a “21-day autoethnography challenge” set of self-guided prompts was to build embodied sensibilities toward the material we study, practice autoethnographic forms of writing and analysis, and transform personal experiences through this COVID-19 moment into critical understanding of scale, sensemaking, and relationality of humans, nonhumans, and the planet. This article showcases the prompts to illustrate the method and flexible adaptation required for the project.
This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Bi... more This is an introduction to the special issue of “Ethics as Methods: Doing Ethics in the Era of Big Data Research.” Building on a variety of theoretical paradigms (i.e., critical theory, [new] materialism, feminist ethics, theory of cultural techniques) and frameworks (i.e., contextual integrity, deflationary perspective, ethics of care), the Special Issue contributes specific cases and fine-grained conceptual distinctions to ongoing discussions about the ethics in data-driven research. In the second decade of the 21st century, a grand narrative is emerging that posits knowledge derived from data analytics as true, because of the objective qualities of data, their means of collection and analysis, and the sheer size of the data set. The by-product of this grand narrative is that the qualitative aspects of behavior and experience that form the data are diminished, and the human is removed from the process of analysis. This situates data science as a process of analysis performed by th...
Beginning with the premise that most regulatory guidelines for research ethics are deeply flawed,... more Beginning with the premise that most regulatory guidelines for research ethics are deeply flawed, this article walks the reader through three models that can help social researchers, technologists, and designers identify and reflect on how they’re approaching ethics, or “doing the right thing” in their own work. The first, an error-avoidance model, has traditionally focused on creating frameworks to help researchers avoid repeating historical ethical violations. The second concept-driven model focuses on refining the concepts that undergird core ethical frameworks. Both are dominant in human-focused research and tend to be highly proceduralized, implemented a priori or from the top down as part of largescale regulatory structures. In both of these models, the agency of the researcher is removed or dismissed as less relevant than the agency of the system. The article draws on recent controversies around data collection and corporate experimentation on social media users as well as tw...
Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Social Media & Society - #SMSociety17, 2017
How do young people make sense of their social media experiences, which rhetoric do they use, whi... more How do young people make sense of their social media experiences, which rhetoric do they use, which grand narratives of technology and social media do they rely on? Based on discourse analysis of approximately 500 pages of written data and 390 minutes of video (generated by 50 college students aged 18-30 between 2014-2016) this article explores how young people negotiate their own experience and existing discourses about social media. Our analysis shows that young people rely heavily on canonic binaries from utopian and dystopian interpretations of networked technologies to apply labels to themselves, others, and social media in general. As they are prompted to reflect on their experience, their rhetoric about social media use and its implications becomes more nuanced yet remains inherently contradictory. This reflects a dialectical struggle to make sense of their lived experiences and feelings. Our unique methodology for generating deeply self-reflexive, auto-ethnographic narrative accounts suggests a way for scholars to be able to understand the ongoing struggles for meaning that occur within the granularity of everyday reflections about our own social media use.
Setting the Mood Weirdly, everything feels the same. There’s absolutely no distinction for me be... more Setting the Mood Weirdly, everything feels the same. There’s absolutely no distinction for me between news, work, walking, gaming, Netflix, rock collecting, scrolling, messaging. I don’t know how this happened, but everything has simply blurred together. There’s a dreadful and yet soothing sameness to it, scrolling through images on Instagram, scrolling Netflix, walking the dog, scrolling the news, time scrolling by as I watch face after face appear or disappear on my screen, all saying something, yet saying nothing. Is this the rhythm of crisis in a slow apocalypse? Really, would it be possible for humans to just bore themselves into oblivion? Because in the middle of a pandemic, boredom feels in my body the same as doom ... just another swell that passes, like my chest as it rises and falls with my breath. This opening anecdote comes from combining narratives in two studies we conducted online during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020: a global study, Massive and Microscopic Sensemaki...
Pre-publication proof copy.
Feldwork is the foundation of robust ethnographic inquiry in physic... more Pre-publication proof copy.
Feldwork is the foundation of robust ethnographic inquiry in physical settings, but the practical methods have never fit well in digital contexts. Often, online ethnographers must radically adjust or rethink activities of fieldwork, to the point where they may hardly resemble "fieldwork" anymore.This essay discusses the persistent challenges of transferring fieldwork methods intended for physically situated contexts to digitally-mediated social contexts. I offer provocations for considering the premises rather than the procedures of field-work. These may not be seen on the surface level of method but operate at a level below method, or in everyday inquiry as practice. Reverse engineering classic fieldwork tools can help reveal the reasons they were invented in the first place. Then, one can search for tools that fulfill these premises but utilize different practical techniques.
To see an official published version: Markham, A. N. (2022). The ontological insecurity of discon... more To see an official published version: Markham, A. N. (2022). The ontological insecurity of disconnecting: A theory of echolocation and the self. In Chia, A., Jorge, A., and Karppi, T. (Eds.). Reckoning with Social Media: Disconnection in the Age of the Techlash (pp forthcoming). Rowman & Littlefield.
This draft work presents a theory of sociality based on the ‘always on’ characteristics of life in the social media age. When people disconnect from the network, there can be a notable absence of the steady stream of identity pings. It can leave ‘always on’ users feeling bereft of the continual marking of boundaries of the edges of the Self. This ontology of echo-locating the Self through constant “call and response” can cause feelings of existential vulnerability or ontological insecurity, where the self, even the body, is cast into doubt. This theory of social echolocation is based in the idea that the seemingly seamless ‘always on’ state of connectivity is, at the more granular level, a process of continual echolocation, in the way we might think of radar, whereby the outline of an object in space is determined by sending a steady stream of sound signals and listening to the quality of the echo. At the micro-interactional level, we can see this constant radar pinging to find the self. The theory of sociality presented in this draft work is part of a forthcoming book on the topic. It emerges from six years of ethnographic and phenomenological study of around 1,500 youth regarding their everyday digital media.
This collection of dialogues is the only textbook of its kind. Internet Inquiry: Conversations Ab... more This collection of dialogues is the only textbook of its kind. Internet Inquiry: Conversations About Method takes students into the minds of top internet researchers as they discuss how they have worked through critical challenges as they research online social environments. Editors Annette N. Markham and Nancy K. Baym illustrate that good research choices are not random but are deliberate, studied, and internally consistent. Rather than providing single "how to" answers, this book presents distinctive and divergent viewpoints on how to think about and conduct qualitative internet studies.
Alienating for some, yet most intimate and real for others, emerging communications technologies ... more Alienating for some, yet most intimate and real for others, emerging communications technologies are creating a varied array of cyberspace experiences. Nowhere are the new and old more intertwined, as familiar narratives of the past and radical visions of the future inform our attempts to assess the impact of cyberspace on self and society. Amidst the dizzying pace of technological innovation, Annette Markham embarks on a unique, ethnographic approach to understanding internet users by immersing herself in on-line reality. The result is an engrossing narrative as well as a theoretically engaging journey. A cast of characters, the reflexive author among them, emerge from Markham's interviews and research to depict the complexity and diversity of internet realities. While cyberspace is hyped as a disembodied cultural arena where physical reality can be transcended, Markham finds that to understand how people experience the internet, she must learn how to be embodied there-a process of acculturation and immersion which is not so different from other anthropological projects of cross-cultural understanding. Both new and not-so-new, cyberspace provides a context in which we can ask new sorts of questions about all cultural experience.
This is a study of how we come to know others through the research process, the study of how cont... more This is a study of how we come to know others through the research process, the study of how contexts of Cyberspace are constructed through discourse, and a study of how eight people who live a portion of or most of their lives online make sense of their experiences. The overall ...
This is a study of how we come to know others through the research process, the study of how cont... more This is a study of how we come to know others through the research process, the study of how contexts of Cyberspace are constructed through discourse, and a study of how eight people who live a portion of or most of their lives online make sense of their experiences. The overall ...
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a further extension of the sociotechnical logics of digital platfo... more The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a further extension of the sociotechnical logics of digital platforms to every realm of social life. Given the colonialist, oppressive and exploitative dynamics through which digital platforms work, several scholars supported the need to embrace an openly activist role to help individuals contrast the ways in which they are trapped in loops of dependency and trajectorism. Drawing on the results of 40 auto-ethnographic diaries, this paper showcases the usefulness of critical pedagogical techniques in enhancing critical awareness regarding hegemonic datafication structures, while also arguing that despite a good level of consciousness raising, it remains difficult for people to go beyond subalternity and make more concrete changes in personal and collective behaviors. We contend that to break persistent feelings of dependency, it is necessary to go further with a two-step process combining autoethnographic tools, aimed at increasing critical algorithmic ...
The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a further extension of the sociotechnical logics of digital platfo... more The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a further extension of the sociotechnical logics of digital platforms to every realm of social life. Given the colonialist, oppressive and exploitative dynamics through which digital platforms work, several scholars supported the need to embrace an openly activist role to help individuals contrast the ways in which they are trapped in loops of dependency and trajectorism. Drawing on the results of 40 auto-ethnographic diaries, this paper showcases the usefulness of critical pedagogical techniques in enhancing critical awareness regarding hegemonic datafication structures, while also arguing that despite a good level of consciousness raising, it remains difficult for people to go beyond subalternity and make more concrete changes in personal and collective behaviors. We contend that to break persistent feelings of dependency, it is necessary to go further with a two-step process combining autoethnographic tools, aimed at increasing critical algorithmic awareness, with the development of data science skills that can help individuals acquiring more precise knowledge schemes and scaling down the power of giant corporations, thereby building individual and collective capacities to use data for developing counter-narratives about possible futures.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how critical digital and data literacies are facilitated by te... more Purpose This paper aims to explore how critical digital and data literacies are facilitated by testing different methods in the classroom, with the ambition to find a pedagogical framework for prompting sustained critical literacies.
Design/methodology/approach This contribution draws on a 10-year set of critical pedagogy experiments conducted in Denmark, USA and Italy, and engaging more than 1,500 young adults. Multi-method pedagogical design trains students to conduct self-oriented guided autoethnography, situational analysis, allegorical mapping, and critical infrastructure analysis.
Findings The techniques of guided autoethnography for facilitating sustained data literacy rely on inviting multiple iterations of self-analysis through sequential prompts, whereby students move through stages of observation, critical thinking, critical theory-informed critique around the lived experience of hegemonic data and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructures.
Research limitations/implications Critical digital/data literacy researchers should continue to test models for building sustained critique that not only facilitate changes in behavior over time but also facilitate citizen social science, whereby participants use these autoethnographic techniques with friends and families to build locally relevant critique of the hegemonic power of data/AI infrastructures.
Originality/value The proposed literacy model adopts a critical theory stance and shows the value of using multiple modes of intervention at micro and macro levels to prompt self-analysis and meta-level reflexivity for learners. This framework places critical theory at the center of the pedagogy to spark more radical stances, which is contended to be an essential step in moving students from attitudinal change to behavioral change.
This paper takes an actor network theory approach to explore some of the ways that algorithms co-... more This paper takes an actor network theory approach to explore some of the ways that algorithms co-construct identity and relational meaning in contemporary use of social media. Based on intensive interviews with participants as well as activity logging and data tracking, the author presents a richly layered set of accounts to help build our understanding of how individuals relate to their devices, search systems, and social network sites. This work extends critical analyses of the power of algorithms in implicating the social self by offering narrative accounts from multiple perspectives. It also contributes an innovative method for blending actor network theory with symbolic interaction to grapple with the complexity of everyday sensemaking practices within networked global information flows.
This data paper documents a dataset that captures cultural attitudes towards machine vision techn... more This data paper documents a dataset that captures cultural attitudes towards machine vision technologies as they are expressed in art, games and narratives. The dataset includes records of 500 creative works (including 77 digital games, 190 digital artworks and 233 movies, novels and other narratives) that use or represent machine vision technologies like facial recognition, deepfakes, and augmented reality. The dataset is divided into three main tables, relating to the works, to specific situations in each work involving machine vision technologies, and to the characters that interact with the technologies. Data about each work include title, author, year and country of publication; types of machine vision technologies featured; topics the work addresses, and sentiments shown towards machine vision in the work. In the various works we identified 874 specific situations where machine vision is central. The dataset includes detailed data about each of these situations that describes the actions of human and non-human agents, including machine vision technologies. The dataset is the product of a digital humanities project and can be also viewed as a database at http://machine-vision.no. Data was collected by a team of topic experts who followed an analytical model developed to explore relationships between humans and technologies, inspired by posthumanist and feminist new materialist theories. The dataset is particularly useful for humanities and social science scholars interested in the relationship between technology and culture, and by designers, artists, and scientists developing machine vision technologies.
#SMSociety'17, July 28-30, 2017, Toronto, ON, Canada, 2017
How do young people make sense of their social media experiences, which rhetoric do they use, whi... more How do young people make sense of their social media experiences, which rhetoric do they use, which grand narratives of technology and social media do they rely on? Based on discourse analysis of approximately 500 pages of written data and 390 minutes of video (generated by 50 college students aged 18-30 between 2014-2016) this article explores how young people negotiate their own experience and existing discourses about social media. Our analysis shows that young people rely heavily on canonic binaries from utopian and dystopian interpretations of networked technologies to apply labels to themselves, others, and social media in general. As they are prompted to reflect on their experience, their rhetoric about social media use and its implications becomes more nuanced yet remains inherently contradictory. This reflects a dialectical struggle to make sense of their lived experiences and feelings. Our unique methodology for generating deeply self-reflexive, auto-ethnographic narrative accounts suggests a way for scholars to be able to understand the ongoing struggles for meaning that occur within the granularity of everyday reflections about our own social media use. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI • Human-centered computing → Social media • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in collaborative and social computing • Applied computing → Sociology 1 Social media can be defined as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange
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Papers, published or unpublished by Annette Markham
removed from the process of analysis. This situates data science as a process of analysis performed by the tool, which obscures
human decisions in the process. The scholars involved in this Special Issue problematize the assumptions and trends in big data research and point out the crisis in accountability that emerges from using such data to make societal interventions. Our collaborators offer a range of answers to the question of how to configure ethics through a methodological framework in the context of the prevalence of big data, neural networks, and automated, algorithmic governance of much of human socia(bi)lity.
Feldwork is the foundation of robust ethnographic inquiry in physical settings, but the practical methods have never fit well in digital contexts. Often, online ethnographers must radically adjust or rethink activities of fieldwork, to the point where they may hardly resemble "fieldwork" anymore.This essay discusses the persistent challenges of transferring fieldwork methods intended for physically situated contexts to digitally-mediated social contexts. I offer provocations for considering the premises rather than the procedures of field-work. These may not be seen on the surface level of method but operate at a level below method, or in everyday inquiry as practice. Reverse engineering classic fieldwork tools can help reveal the reasons they were invented in the first place. Then, one can search for tools that fulfill these premises but utilize different practical techniques.
This draft work presents a theory of sociality based on the ‘always on’ characteristics of life in the social media age. When people disconnect from the network, there can be a notable absence of the steady stream of identity pings. It can leave ‘always on’ users feeling bereft of the continual marking of boundaries of the edges of the Self. This ontology of echo-locating the Self through constant “call and response” can cause feelings of existential vulnerability or ontological insecurity, where the self, even the body, is cast into doubt. This theory of social echolocation is based in the idea that the seemingly seamless ‘always on’ state of connectivity is, at the more granular level, a process of continual echolocation, in the way we might think of radar, whereby the outline of an object in space is determined by sending a steady stream of sound signals and listening to the quality of the echo. At the micro-interactional level, we can see this constant radar pinging to find the self. The theory of sociality presented in this draft work is part of a forthcoming book on the topic. It emerges from six years of ethnographic and phenomenological study of around 1,500 youth regarding their everyday digital media.
removed from the process of analysis. This situates data science as a process of analysis performed by the tool, which obscures
human decisions in the process. The scholars involved in this Special Issue problematize the assumptions and trends in big data research and point out the crisis in accountability that emerges from using such data to make societal interventions. Our collaborators offer a range of answers to the question of how to configure ethics through a methodological framework in the context of the prevalence of big data, neural networks, and automated, algorithmic governance of much of human socia(bi)lity.
Feldwork is the foundation of robust ethnographic inquiry in physical settings, but the practical methods have never fit well in digital contexts. Often, online ethnographers must radically adjust or rethink activities of fieldwork, to the point where they may hardly resemble "fieldwork" anymore.This essay discusses the persistent challenges of transferring fieldwork methods intended for physically situated contexts to digitally-mediated social contexts. I offer provocations for considering the premises rather than the procedures of field-work. These may not be seen on the surface level of method but operate at a level below method, or in everyday inquiry as practice. Reverse engineering classic fieldwork tools can help reveal the reasons they were invented in the first place. Then, one can search for tools that fulfill these premises but utilize different practical techniques.
This draft work presents a theory of sociality based on the ‘always on’ characteristics of life in the social media age. When people disconnect from the network, there can be a notable absence of the steady stream of identity pings. It can leave ‘always on’ users feeling bereft of the continual marking of boundaries of the edges of the Self. This ontology of echo-locating the Self through constant “call and response” can cause feelings of existential vulnerability or ontological insecurity, where the self, even the body, is cast into doubt. This theory of social echolocation is based in the idea that the seemingly seamless ‘always on’ state of connectivity is, at the more granular level, a process of continual echolocation, in the way we might think of radar, whereby the outline of an object in space is determined by sending a steady stream of sound signals and listening to the quality of the echo. At the micro-interactional level, we can see this constant radar pinging to find the self. The theory of sociality presented in this draft work is part of a forthcoming book on the topic. It emerges from six years of ethnographic and phenomenological study of around 1,500 youth regarding their everyday digital media.
This paper aims to explore how critical digital and data literacies are facilitated by testing different methods in the classroom, with the ambition to find a pedagogical framework for prompting sustained critical literacies.
Design/methodology/approach
This contribution draws on a 10-year set of critical pedagogy experiments conducted in Denmark, USA and Italy, and engaging more than 1,500 young adults. Multi-method pedagogical design trains students to conduct self-oriented guided autoethnography, situational analysis, allegorical mapping, and critical infrastructure analysis.
Findings
The techniques of guided autoethnography for facilitating sustained data literacy rely on inviting multiple iterations of self-analysis through sequential prompts, whereby students move through stages of observation, critical thinking, critical theory-informed critique around the lived experience of hegemonic data and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructures.
Research limitations/implications
Critical digital/data literacy researchers should continue to test models for building sustained critique that not only facilitate changes in behavior over time but also facilitate citizen social science, whereby participants use these autoethnographic techniques with friends and families to build locally relevant critique of the hegemonic power of data/AI infrastructures.
Originality/value
The proposed literacy model adopts a critical theory stance and shows the value of using multiple modes of intervention at micro and macro levels to prompt self-analysis and meta-level reflexivity for learners. This framework places critical theory at the center of the pedagogy to spark more radical stances, which is contended to be an essential step in moving students from attitudinal change to behavioral change.