Digital Methods Summer School 2012 – Call for Participants

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) will host its 6th annual Summer School from 25 June to 6 July 2012 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This year’s theme is “Reality mining, and the limits of digital methods.” It is organized for new media researchers (broadly conceived), and is open to (early stage) PhD candidates, advanced master’s degree students, recent graduates and motivated scholars. It is a working Summer School, in that all participants work on projects, collectively conceived, that explore this year’s theme, trace mining.

The Summer School is a training program, where participants receive a certificate of completion. It is also an intensive (and rewarding) workshop environment, where participants work in teams, tracing and mapping data, objects and issues. DMI also invites special guests as resource people to present their research and projects in morning lectures. There is a final presentation where the Summer School accomplishments are presented to participants and invitees.

Below please find the call for participation. Please note that the application deadline is Friday 4 May 2012. Candidates will be notified on Tuesday 8 May 2012.

Feel free to forward the call to interested individuals.

Looking forward to your application and to the Summer School,

the Digital Methods team

Call for participants
Digital Methods Summer School 2012
New Media and Digital Culture
Dept. of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam
25 June – 6 July 2012

https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/DmiSummer2012

Reality mining, and the limits of digital methods
When it becomes simple to trace your friend’s network, your movements online and even the provenance of the can of Coke next to your computer screen, reality becomes subject to prediction and to speculation — in both the financial and the philosophical sense. This transparency discourse is limited by access to data. Indeed, our actions often generate effect far in excess of our own awareness — how “open” is the open graph really? The concept of “ethical traceability” has been developed for instance as a regulatory discourse to ensure the security of supply chains, yet in spite of the proliferation of digital traces, consumers have only very limited access to these logistical data. How then do we use digital methods to become more “aware”? Can we adapt our methods to work in recommended or relatively closed environments? How do we use devices to test their claims, but also to reveal and circumvent their blind alleys?

After developing a semiotics and structuralism of the link and the network, we explore how digital methods deal with notions of absence. Building on past work in post-demographics and networked content, these workshops will unpack the paradox of online awareness, from social recommendation devices to product and service review sites. Building tools and working with leaked data, our approach this time will be to go beyond merely tracing things in order to make mute objects speak.

About “Digital Methods” as Concept
Digital methods is a term coined as a counter-point to virtual methods, which typically digitize existing methods and port them onto the Web. Digital methods, contrariwise, seek to learn from the methods built into the dominant devices online, and repurpose them for social and cultural research. That is, the challenge is to study both the info-web as well as the social web with the tools that organize them. There is a general protocol to digital methods. At the outset stock is taken of the natively digital objects that are available (links, tags, threads, etc.) and how devices such as search engines make use of them. Can the device techniques be repurposed, for example by remixing the digital objects they take as inputs? Once findings are made with online data, where to ground them? With more online data?

About the Summer School
The Digital Methods Summer School, founded in 2007 together with the Digital Methods Initiative, is directed by Professor Richard Rogers, Chair in New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. The Summer School is one training opportunity provided by the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI). DMI also has a Winter School, which includes a mini-conference, where papers are presented and responded to. Winter School papers are often the result of Summer School projects. The Summer School is coordinated by two PhD candidates in New Media at the University of Amsterdam, or DMI affiliates. This year the coordinators are Lonneke van der Velden and Marc Tuters both of the University of Amsterdam. The Summer School has a technical staff as well as a design staff. The Summer School also relies on a technical infrastructure of some five servers hosting tools and storing data. Participants bring their laptops, learn method, undertake research projects, make reports, tools and graphics and write them up on the Digital Methods wiki. The Summer School concludes with final presentations. Often there are guests from non-governmental or other organizations who present their issues. For instance, Women on Waves came along during the 2010 Summer School. Digital Methods people are currently interning at Greenpeace International and the Global Reporting Initiative.

Previous Digital Methods Summer Schools, 2007-2011: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/DmiSummerSchool

2011 Summer School flickr stream: http://bit.ly/q9fepW

The Digital Methods Initiative was founded with a grant from the Mondriaan Foundation, and the Summer School is supported by the Center for Creation, Content and Technology (CCCT), University of Amsterdam, hosted by the Faculty of Science with support from Platform Beta.

Summer School Training Certificate
The Digital Methods Summer School issues completion certificates to participants who follow the Summer School program, and complete a significant contribution to a Summer School project. For previous Summer School projects, see for example https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WikipediaAsASpaceOfControversy.

Applications & Fees
To apply for the Digital Methods Summer School, 25 June – 6 July 2012, please send a one-page letter explaining how digital methods training would benefit your current work, and also enclose a CV. Mark your application subject header, “DMI Training Certificate Program 2012.” The deadline for applications for the Summer School is Friday 4 May 2012. Notices will be sent on Tuesday 8 May 2012. Please address your application email to the Summer School coordinators, Lonneke van der Velden and Marc Tuters, and send to info [at] digitalmethods.net. Informal queries may be sent to Lonneke or Marc, lonneke[at] digitalmethods.net or marc[at] digitalmethods.net.

The Summer School costs EUR 295 per person. Accepted applicants will be informed of the bank transfer details upon notice of acceptance to the Summer School. The fee must be paid by 11 June 2012.

Logistics: Travel & Accommodation
Generally, participants must arrange their own travel and accommodation. The Digital Methods Summer School offers a limited number of Amsterdam apartments for reasonable rates, checking in on Saturday, 23 June and checking out on Saturday, 7 July. These are single apartments with cooking facilities. Doubles also may be available. For housing requests, please write to the Summer School organizers, who will inform you about availability. Once an apartment is reserved, the rent (and cleaning fee) should be paid together with the Summer School fee by 11 June.

Summer School Schedule
The Summer School meets Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and all participants also work on the Tuesdays and Thursdays. Please bring your laptop. We will provide abundant connectivity. We start generally at 9:30 in the morning, and end around 5:30. On the last Friday we have a boat trip through the canals of Amsterdam.

Summer School Location
New Media & Digital Culture, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam, Turfdraagsterpad 9, 1012 XT Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Rooms 0.13 & 0.04. Morning lectures

Digital Methods Winter School 2012 Revisited

We have a bonus session that draws upon the Digital Methods Winter School 2012, “Interfaces for the Cloud” and API critique. We have invited Metahaven, the critical Dutch design group, to present their work that actually renders the politics of the cloud.

We look forward to welcoming you to Amsterdam in the Summertime!

Slides and notes from the Digital Methods Winterschool 2012: Interfaces for the Cloud: Curating the Data

From 25-27 January 2012 we held our fourth annual Winter School with the theme “Interfaces for the Cloud: Curating the Data.” The first day consisted of paper presentations and responses/feedback. The second day we collaboratively kicked off a workshop on API critique where Anne Helmond started with an introduction to APIs and API critiques, followed by Bernhard Rieder on API variations and change, followed by Richard Rogers introducing project ideas for the next day and a half.

See Anne Helmond’s blog for the slides and notes of her introduction to APIs and API critiques. The project pages of the workshop can be found on the Digital Methods Winterschool 2012 wiki page. Also, winterschool participant Jean-Christophe Plantin wrote a blogpost inspired by the winterschool on “The Internet as a software: repurposing API for online research.“

Interfaces for the Cloud: Curating the Data

Interfaces for the Cloud: Curating the Data
Digital Methods Winter School (mini-conference and workshop)
25-27 January 2012
Media Studies
Turfdraagsterpad 9
University of Amsterdam
http://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/DmiWinterSchool

The Digital Methods Initiative is holding its fourth annual Winter School on 25-27 January 2012 at Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. To gain a sense of the atmosphere of the DMI Winter School, see the report from the first one, “Digital Methods: First Steps” (Stevenson/Rogers, 2009).

Digital Methods Winter School Mini-conference
The mini-conference provides the opportunity for digital methods and allied researchers to present short yet complete papers (5,000-7,500 words) and serve as respondents, providing feedback. Often the work presented follows from previous Digital Methods Summer Schools. The mini-conference accepts papers in the general digital methods and allied areas: the hyperlink and other natively digital objects, the website as archived object, web historiographies, search engine critique, google as globalizing machine, cross-spherical analysis and other approaches to comparative media studies, device cultures, national web studies, wikipedia as cultural reference, the technicity of (networked) content, post-demographics, platform studies, crawling and scraping, graphing and clouding, and similar.

Digital Methods Winter School Workshop
For the Winter School Workshop the theme is API critique, where we seek to build interfaces on the cloud, in particular connecting with select APIs, pulling in and curating the data, learning from dominant algorithms, and repurposing them for social and cultural research. There will be dedicated teams working on big data company APIs, and proposing interfaces (with tools) onto the cloud, or however we may wish to call the source of the data streams. The critique of APIs follows from working with them. There also will be interface design for curated data, and a separate stream on data curation.

Key dates
20 December 2011: Submission of paper titles, abstracts and bios
21 December 2011: Notifications
20 January 2012: Submission of complete papers (5,000-8,000 words)
21 January 2012: Program and schedule
25-27 January 2012: DMI Mini-conference and Workshop

Tentative Winter School Schedule
25 January 9.30-5 Mini-conference, per paper: 10-minute presentations, two 5-minute responses, 5-minute Q&A
26 January 9.30-5 Workshop, with morning mini-talks, introducing the streams (API critique, Data interface design, Data curation)
27 January 9.30-5 Workshop, with morning talk (“The politics of the cloud”)

About
The Digital Methods Winter School is part of the Digital Methods Initiative, Amsterdam, dedicated to reworking method for Internet-related research. The Digital Methods Initiative holds the annual Digital Methods Summer Schools (five to date), which are intensive and full time 2-week undertakings in late June, early July. The coordinators of the Digital Methods Initiative are Sabine Niederer and Esther Weltevrede (PhD candidates in New Media & Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam), and the director is Richard Rogers, Professor of New Media & Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam. Digital methods are online at http://www.digitalmethods.net/.

Announcement: Digital Methods Summer School 2011

Digital Methods Summer School 2011
Media Studies, University of Amsterdam
27 June – 8 July 2011

After Cyberspace: Data-rich Media

The Digital Methods Summer School, now in its fifth edition, trains post-graduates, PhD candidates and motivated students and scholars in how to undertake Web research after cyberspace. The idea of “after cyberspace” is an invitation to think through and study the web without resort to the traditions informing “virtual” and “cyber” corporality, politics and identity. Rather the web, first with locative technology, later with language and national webs, and more recently with college and corporate networking software (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) continues to be grounded.

In the 2011 Digital Methods Summer School we will pay homage to cyberspace, in the opening, by presenting thought on a particular strand of media coverage about WikiLeaks, where cybergurus and cyberwar experts reappear on the scene. Just as importantly, we will ask, how to make use of the leaks, and their containers, for research purposes? From data-driven journalism to bespoke cablegate engines, does WikiLeaks spawn an online ecology of tools, visualizations and other substantive practices and outputs? Is such an ecology typical for data platforms? For comparative purposes, we will introduce and study the tool and visualization universes of Twitter as well as Wikipedia, both of which are examples of data-rich media. We would like to learn from platform media analytics and apply it to other data-rich media, so as to further develop tools for cultural diagnostics. One challenge is the question of device effects. For example, when comparing the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia entries for the Srebrenica Massacre, does Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view” policies overdetermine the content, perhaps neutralize it, or can one read culturally distinctive views on the events?

Another strand of study is networked content, which is thought of as online content held together, maintained or even co-authored by software and bots. The interplay of search engines and content interests us this year, not just because Wikipedia articles are routinely at the top of Google results. (The relationship between Google and Wikipedia remains understudied.) But there is also content seemingly authored for engines first and readers only second, as in the case of “demand media.” We would like to study efforts that seek to fill in engine results with content, reopening the question of engine epistemology. Presentations will include work on engine log analysis. Apart from (Google) flu trends, are log analyses able to identify and geo-locate cultural and political preference?

About “Digital Methods” as Concept
Digital Methods is a term coined as a counter-point to virtual methods, which typically digitize existing methods and port them onto the Web. Digital Methods, contrariwise, seek to learn from the methods built into the dominant devices online, and repurpose them for social and cultural research. That is, the challenge is to study the info-web and the social web with the tools that organize them. There is a general protocol to digital methods. At the outset stock is taken of the natively digital objects that are available (links, tags, threads, etc.) and how devices such as search engines make use of them. Can the device techniques be repurposed, for example by remixing the digital objects they take as inputs?

Digital Methods are online at http://www.digitalmethods.net/

About the Summer School
The Digital Methods Summer School, founded in 2007 together with the Digital Methods Initiative, is directed by Professor Richard Rogers, Chair in New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. The Summer School is one training opportunity provided by the Digital Methods Initiative (DMI). DMI also has a Winter School, also known as the mini-conference, where papers are presented and responded to. Winter School papers are often the result of Summer School projects. The Summer School is coordinated by two PhD candidates in New Media at the University of Amsterdam, or affiliates. This year the coordinators are Anne Helmond (University of Amsterdam) and Carolin Gerlitz (Goldsmiths, University of London). The Summer School has a technical staff as well as a design staff. The Summer School also relies on a technical infrastructure of some five servers hosting tools and storing data. Participants bring their laptops, learn method, undertake research projects, make reports, tools and graphics and write them up on the Digital Methods wiki. The Summer School concludes with final presentations. Often there are guests from non-governmental or other organizations who present their issues. Women on Waves came along during the 2010 Summer School. Greenpeace International, based in Amsterdam, will be invited in 2011.

Previous Digital Methods Summer Schools, 2007-2010, http://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/DmiSummerSchool.

The Digital Methods Initiative was founded with a grant from the Mondriaan Foundation, and the Summer School is supported by the Center for Creation, Content and Technology (CCCT), organized by the Faculty of Science with sponsorship from Platform Beta.

Summer School Training Certificate
The Digital Methods Summer School issues completion certificates to participants who follow the Summer School program, and complete a significant contribution to a Summer School project. For previous Summer School projects, see for example http://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WikipediaAsASpaceOfControversy.

Applications & Fees
To apply for the Digital Methods Summer School, 27 June – 8 July 2011, please send a one-page letter explaining how digital methods training would benefit your current work, and also enclose a CV. Mark your application “DMI Training Certificate Program.” The early bird application deadline is 7 March 2011. Early bird candidates will be informed on 7 April 2011. The regular deadline for applications for the Summer School is 8 April. Notices will be sent on 15 April. Please address your application email to the Summer School coordinators, Anne Helmond and Carolin Gerlitz, and send to info digitalmethods.net. Informal queries may be sent to Anne or Carolin, anne [at] digitalmethods.net or c.gerlitz [at] digitalmethods.net.

The Summer School costs EUR 295 per person, which covers the (travel) costs of the non-technical teaching staff and the catered, canal boat trip upon conclusion of the Summer School. Accepted applicants will be informed of the bank transfer details upon notice of acceptance to the Summer School. The fee must be paid by 15 May 2011.

Logistics
Participants must arrange their own travel and accommodation. Please bring your laptop. We will provide abundant connectivity.

Summer School Location
New Media & Digital Culture
University of Amsterdam
Turfdraagsterpad 9
1012 XT Amsterdam
the Netherlands
Rooms 0.13 & 0.04

We look forward to welcoming you!

Who In The Australian Department of Justice Edited Julian Assange’s Wikipedia Page?

It’s no surprise that Julian Assange’s Wikipedia page has already undergone more than 800 revisions in the first two weeks of December. On the 23 November Wikipedia changed the edit setting on the page to allow for “semi-protection” which prevents any anonymous IP addresses and unconfirmed users from editing the content.  However, before this protection change and according to the Wikipedia edit history, on 23 September 2010 shortly before midnight, the entry for Julian Assange was edited by a user whose IP address belongs to the Australian Government’s Justice Department. The user attempted to make a seemingly innocuous change to the page by adding: “Assange is a supporter of the North Melbourne Football Club” under the Early Life section of the entry. The contribution was speedily deleted a minute later by another user.

The Australian user (IP address 165.142.249.81) is hardly a Wiki novice, with a thousand edits listed in their profile. The user is also warned numerous times by Wikipedia editors to refrain from vandalizing content on the site:

“This is the last warning you will receive for your disruptive edits, such as those you made to Talk:Whaling in Japan ‎. If you vandalize Wikipedia again, you will be blocked from editing. Toddst1 (talk) 15:54, 7 January 2010 (UTC).”

The user’s edit history, as provided by Wikipedia, covers a wide variety of topics including music; football; the Australian 50 dollar bill; Irish politics; politicians’ biographies; judges in the Australian judiciary; whaling in Japan; sluts; shit; and an edit war on the Australasian Intervarsity Debating Championships. In one edit, for the entry on “Bung”  (an apparatus used to seal a container) the user attempts this inclusion:

“Over 80% of males understand what a “bung” is, in contrast to only 5% of females. The reasons for this discrepency (sic) are unknown, but some authors have speculated that a fascination with trivial issues, unicorns and fashion may be to blame.”

Alongside other attempted edits of Assange’s page like those about the details of his custody battle and reputation and alleged rape charges, this user’s edit would seem harmless. It signals intent on the part of someone in the Department of Justice to contribute to Assange’s rich life and biography, without any political intent. But surely this breaks with protocol in the Department? Perhaps this user is giving a virtual “high five” to another North Melbourne Football Club fan but there is no guarantee that this user did not attempt other edits from a different IP address. Previously, the practice of geo-locating anonymous editors of Wikipedia resulted in scandals, and in governments and corporations banning their employees from editing Wikipedia. This Wikipedia edit is of another order but it also seems as if many of the contributions from this user are not positively and/or constructively contributing to the site. Who is this user? A bored intern? Does the Department take Wikipedia seriously? Are they monitoring this activity amongst staff? And if they are then what else can we assume?

This post is based on a Digital Methods for Internet Research assignment for the New Media Masters Course at the University of Amsterdam by Natalie Dixon.

Mapping the Dutch Blogosphere at Mapping Ignite

On July 9th, Esther Weltevrede and Anne Helmond presented their ongoing research on the Dutch Blogosphere at the Mediamatic Mapping Ignite event. Here are the slides and notes from our 5 minute superfast and condensed informational Ignite talk on researching and mapping the Dutch Blogosphere.

Read more …

Skyrock image analysis: Color as a main signifier of national/cultural belonging

In June the Digital Methods Initiative was invited to attend a workshop devoted to numerical methods in research on migration in Paris, organized by The ICT-Migration program, in collaboration with the University of California (Santa Cruz). Together with Matthieu Renault and other colleagues we did a small project on image representation used on one of France’s largest blogging and social networking site Skyrock¹.

Read more …

1. #14 website (across all categories) in Traffic Rank in France according to Alexa. [↩]

Slides from DMI Summer 2010 – Final Presentations

On the 23rd of September the Digital Methods Initiative presented project outcomes of the 2010 Summer School.

Prof. Richard Rogers started with situating Digital Methods within the field of Internet Studies as one of the three strands that deals with the computational turn within Humanities. The first project on Facebook activism was presented by PhD candidate Lonneke van der Velden. The project addresses the claim of Facebook as a form of slactivism by looking at what types of activism Facebook enables. The second presentation by Catalina Iorga looks at the myth of data-driven citizen journalism by asking: “Do non-mainstream digital media (e.g. citizen blogs) directly reference Afghan War Diary individual document pages?

The second theme track contained two projects dealing with Web 1.0 vs Web 2.0 analysis and multiple times online. PhD candidate Anne Helmond talked about how the social web has new means of recommending that do not rely on the traditional fundamental unit of analysis in Web 1.0, the link. To what extent do we have new web currencies such as the Like or the (re)Tweet and what type of content is being Liked? In Pace Online PhD candidate Esther Weltevrede addressed the multiplicity of time online by looking at how spheres handle time differently by asking: “How is the temporality of content handled by engines and platforms?” It further complicates the notion of multiplicity by looking at both the update cycles of content (freshness) and the update cycle of the engines (relevance).

PhD candidate Sabine Niederer introduced the final session on the web as a problem for content analysis and asks: “What type of content analysis can be done with the Web.” When the method follows the medium the question becomes: “How to let content speak for itself with no coding, or labeling the (sub) discourses?” The research project on ‘Controversy on Twitter,’ presented by Assistant Professor Thomas Poell, asks how controversy is organized on Twitter. The project focusses on the controversy of the Ground Zero Mosque and looked at (1) how much of the activity was organized through labels and hash tags, (2) which labels and hash tags were used when tweeting about the issue and which parties aligned with these labels and hash tags, (3) if hash tags organize different accounts of the controversy.

Finally, teacher and Digital Methods Initiative’s lead tool developer Erik Borra talked about repurposing Google’s related search for research. This new tool can provide: an overview of the organization of a content space, insights into query design, starting points, identification of programs and anti-programs and classification and organization.

Lecture on Digital Methods: Seemingly Intractable Issues

LECTURE ANNOUNCEMENT

Digital Methods: Seemingly Intractable Issues
By Richard Rogers and the Digital Methods Summer School Group including PhD candidates in New Media & Digital Culture

Organized by: New Media & Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam
Date & Time: Thursday, 23 September 2010, 11:00am – 1pm
Location: University Library, De Doelenzaal (Room C.007), Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam
Admission: free

The new media lecture is dedicated to digital methods, a term and program of research developed since 2007 at the University of Amsterdam [1]. Digital methods seek to analyze Web data in order to make findings about societal conditions and cultural change. Among the basic problems faced by digital methods researchers is the question of the status of Web data. Often considered messy, dirty, incomplete and otherwise reputationally challenged, under which conditions may Web data be seen as robust? Another set of fundamental problems concerns the idea of the Web as virtual, representational or otherwise having a special, ungrounded status. Where does the study of online culture end, and social and cultural research begin? When may the allegedly virtual be considered the baseline against which the real is measured and judged?

Read more …

A Protest’s Web: The Cross-Syndication Practices of G20 Toronto Summit Online Protest Platforms

A research project by Anne Helmond, Catalina Iorga, Alejandro Ortega. Text by Anne Helmond and Catalina Iorga. Project website on the DMI wiki.

From 28 June – 9 July 2010 we organized a Digital Methods Training Certificate Program which is a two-week intensive training and skill acquisition program. This project is one of project outcomes of the first weeks of the DMI Summerschool 2010.

A Protest’s Web

This project aims to comparatively explore the linking modes of one website and two social media platforms used by protesters of the G20 Toronto Summit; the starting point is provided by one of the largest protest groups on Facebook, RESIST TORONTO G20 SUMMIT 2010 (over 6,800 members) and its affiliated Web spaces: the G8/G20 Toronto Community Mobilization website and the @g20mobilize (more than 1,400 followers) Twitter account listed on aforementioned website.

Read more …