By Karin van Es Cristina Cochior and Manetta Berends, both researchers/designers operating in the Netherlands, developed an online workshop Bots and Digital Infrapuncture inspired by professor Deb Verhoeven’s concept “digital infrapuncture”. The aim of the workshop was to imagine bots in chat protocols that intervene in the assumptions on which the platforms are designed. The…

by Karin van Es For the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Association for Cultural Management conference I was asked to organize a data walk. With four other participants we walked the city center of Düsseldorf using the theme “ownership” to frame our conversations as we defined, observed and reflected on data. The first fifteen minutes…

by Karin van Es The incorporation of computational tools in humanities research requires that we think critically about how these tools impact knowledge production. These tools, often adopted from the empirical sciences, have profound implications for data processing and interpretation. It is not surprising then that David Berry (2012) has called for a ‘third wave’…

Utrecht Data School and Utrecht School of Governance cooperate since January in a joint research programme with the municipalities of Almere, Gouda and Woerden, and the Province South-Holland. The DataWorkplace investigates how datafication transforms public management and policy making. Six months into the project, a festive opening of the DataWorkplace took place at  18 September….

video registration JUSTICE AND ORDER IN THE DATAFIED SOCIETY: CONNECTING COMMUNICATIONS AND LEGAL THEORY Preconference  for ICA 2019, Washington DC, Friday May 24, 2019 held at the University of Washington School of Law Organized by: Nick Couldry (London School of Economics), Lina Dencik (Cardiff University), Karin van Es (Utrecht Data School), and Andreas Hepp (University…

Review of “The Emerging Social Order of Data Colonialism: Why Critical Social Theory still Matters!” by prof. dr. Nick Couldry at Utrecht University, 12 June 2019 It is undeniable that the increasing datafication of both Western and non-Western societies involves profound changes in our political and socioeconomic structures, but how should we understand those changes?…

On 12 June the Datafied Society and the Centre for Humanities hosted the lecture The Emerging Social Order of Data Colonialism: Why Critical Social Theory Still Matters! with Prof. Nick Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Science). The event was moderated by Prof. José van Dijck. Repondents were Prof. mr. Janneke Gerards, Dr Koen…

Maranke Wieringa (d.d. 4 June 2019) Meta analyses or systematic literature reviews are taken to be the golden standard for assessing the collective knowledge on a particular topic. While frequently employed within the social and natural sciences, they are hard to put into practice in the Humanities, which do not often have strictly controlled experiments…

One of the four newly identified focus areas at Utrecht University is Governing the Digital Society. Focus areas interdisciplinarily address research objects of societal relevance and develop novel ways of scientific inquiry. The four new focus areas will receive a total of 1,6 million Euro funding for the period September 2019 to August 2023. Big…

We are Rosemarij Zeeman and Kirsten Leufkens, and both of us started the master’ s programme New Media and Digital Culture this year. Rosemarij with a background in communication and information sciences and Kirsten in interdisciplinary social sciences. This makes for a great and interesting collaboration, in which we can use our knowledge to complement…