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September 2021 Digital Methods How? |
Being a Lab within intersections working with qualitative and quantitative approaches, using digital and analogue methods, embodied by scholars who occupy different social categories and are trained in different fields, we try to make space for dialogue and collective reflections. This week’s Mind&Desk, Co-Head of Lab, Marisa Cohn, asked the Lab community to discuss how we relate to the the concept "digital methods" and what our affiliation to the term means for our work as a Lab. How do we as a Lab actually work with Digital Methods? During our discussion we reflected on what is gained or lost by thinking about and describing our ways of working in various way. Working with and through digital methods can be done so differently, and this created a need for clearer language about our engagements. Is it digital methods to use automated transcription tools or to use macrame to visualize data? For us digital methods can certainly not be contained to the starting and ending point of a TCAT scrape, but rather begins from a consideration of how digital methods configure knowledge making practices. The discussion showed, that this is topic to return to and may provide generative reflections for the entire Lab community. |
By the recent employment of Adam Veng joining ETHOS' research community, the tradition of critical mapping in the Lab continues. He will be working with how digital methods can not only be used to depict the landscape of movements working on climate change in Denmark, but also make attempts towards how these methods and this knowledge may be used by the movements themselves. The newsletter also brings an update about another research project, where Lab members and affiliates RA Qiuyu Jiang and RA Mace Ojala and Assoc. Prof. Rachel Douglas-Jones find data on the social media platform Weibo fruitful in investigating how the Chinese social credit system is discussed amongst citizens. Collective space for discussion and sharing is also present in a workshop hosted by associate professor at ITU Katrine Meldgaard Kjær and former ETHOS residence, now Postdoc at Malmö University, Line Henriksen on Vulnerability and Writing. The workshop concerns looking at your own unfinished work with more kindness, as well as dealing with the inevitable uncertainties with releasing something into the world. This fall, we are also launching an event called Breaking Bread in the Lab, aiming to create community and a reflective space where PhD students can share their current struggles or wonders in relation to their project, and invite the participants to think along with them. Keep up to date with the Lab by subscribing to the newsletter and follow us on twitter, facebook or Instagram. All the best for your Septembers and hope to see you in the Lab,
ETHOS Lab
www.ethos.itu.dk
Co-heads of Lab: Marisa Cohn & Rachel Douglas-Jones
Lab Manager: Merethe Riggelsen Gjørding
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A Research Update Since August, the Moving Data Moving People project has been meeting in the Lab to explore Weibo data, collected by Qiuyu Jiang and Mace Ojala. After early MDMP research showed considerable public discussion in China around the inclusion of blood in the pilot social credit system schemes, the project decided to use digital methods to explore some of the Weibo based conversations. Rachel Douglas-Jones, Qiuyu Jiang, and Mace Ojala are developing a reflection paper on method, along with an academic paper drawing on anthropological literature on blood donation along with histories of public health in China in order to review why the boundaries of the SCS were so tested by this 2019 pronouncement. |
By Rikke Haslund Jønsson, Junior Researcher My research process in ETHOS Lab started with the desire to find a way to organize and optimize individual learning for myself and other students as a reaction to the focus on group lectures and group work. I found that we were expected to know how we study optimally when we - the students - are on our own, which I experienced not to be the case. I wanted to analyze how individuals learn on their own compared to a more structured and set learning space in a classroom. Due to my connection to ETHOS Lab, researching NavCom-Radio and Python Study Group become my primary focus as alternative learning sites, but with Covid, communication troubles, and time restraints my attempts and initial ideas did not lead to any outcome. While thinking that one door closed, it just sheds light on all the other wide-open doors. Before giving much thought to my process, I would then just try a new random direction that looked interesting, not considering the specific routes and destination that I desired. |
By Georgios Natsios, Junior Researcher How can one of the most overwhelming powers of Industry 4.0, Artificial Intelligence, be combined with philosophy, ethics, and anthropology? How can AI be ethical with a minimum bias to society, humanity, and nature? Can technological development even be ethical and responsible? The solution that many institutions have proposed is an ethical framework for AI built on certain AI ethical principles/guidelines. However, the guidelines are abstract and lack practical implementation and cannot be translated in technical codes. More so, it has been argued that they are more compliance codes to protect industrial benefits than ethical codes, and they lack normative mechanisms (Haggenholff, 2020; Jobin et al, 2019). Hence, what I would attempt to explore in this blogpost is to outline a different direction of ethics in AI, following the route of virtue ethics and the “ethos” notion by Aristotle. |
ETHOS Lab welcomes Adam Veng, who has just taken on a position as RA in the project Democratic Innovations in a Green Transition. He will join ETHOS' research community and continue the tradition of working with mapping and critical thinking. Adam Veng: "While being new in the field of digital mapping, I intend to bring in critical approaches to mapping methods/approaches by gradually inviting the movements I study (anything from, say, radical activists to local environmental groups) in the actual mapping process. I will iteratively discuss the maps, that I as a researcher produce, with my informants and plan this process to culminate in a ‘data sprint’ where informants are invited to produce their own cartographies (digital and/or analogue) of how they understand and experience the network of the climate movement they are part of." |
ETHOS Lab has the joy of hosting Jasmin Shokoui this fall who will be doing her academic internship with us. She is a student from Munich Center for Technology in Society (MCTS) at the Technical University of Munich and the master’s program “Responsibility in Science, Engineering and Technology” (M.A. RESET) Jasmin Shokoui: "[I hope] to learn more about academic culture in an interdisciplinary, multinational setting and to conduct some interesting empirical data on the practice and the socio-cultural image of Digital Detox." |
Finishing up the JR ProgramFinishing their enrolment in the Junior Researcher program at ETHOS, the Juniors Researchers presented their findings and moments of learning yesterday at ITU. They had so much to share, which was highly beneficial for the ones showing up and perhaps being interested in applying for the program as well. We are all happy for their engagement with the Lab for the last two semesters, and hope to see them around at various events and engagements. |
Digital Self-Care
• Thursday September 23rd, 17.00-18.00, Studenterhuset
• Friday October 29th, 16.00-17.00, ITU, Room TBA
Twice this fall, ETHOS will host an event on digital self-care. We will both do self-reflection exercises and getting things done inspired by guides from Data Detox Kit! Come and clean out your data tracks and get better in touch with how your digital self is doing. |
Vulnerability, monsters & writingMonday October 4th, 10.00-12.00, ETHOS Lab
Join this internal workshop at ITU for TiP and ETHOS members, where you will face one of your texts that has been causing you trouble, and work with rather than against that discomfort.
In the end, we will come face to face with our creations and reflect on our accountability in creating them, as well as for what happens when we release them to roam the world, and all the uncertainties involved in that. Sign up by writing a mail to: merg@itu.dk |
Breaking Bread in the LabTentative dates:
• Friday 8th October: 15.00-16.00, ETHOS Lab
• Friday 5th November: 15.00-16.00, ETHOS Lab
During this one hour session, we will spend time staying with insecurities, detours, and surprising revelations guided by what is on the mind of the PhD presenter. Here we will not share findings, but rather a range of unfinished thoughts and raw reflections and all participants are invited to think along without searching for definitive answers. The event is for PhDs, Postdocs, and a limited amount of chairs for MAs to create stronger links between the groups. We are currently settling on who will present, and are excited about how this dialogue session will turn out. Write to merg@itu.dk if you are interested. |
PhD & Job CallsPostdoc in the Formation of Knowledge: The Stevanovich Institute on the Formation of Knowledge at the University of Chicago invites applications for Postdoctoral Researchers at the Rank of Instructor, to begin on August 1, 2022. Postdocs will join a community of leading scholars from across the University to study the process of knowledge formation and transmittal from antiquity to the present day and to explore how histories and cultures shape our modern world. Deadline: October 5th Postdoc in Digital Health at the Department of Scandinavian Studies and Experience Economy The School of Communication and Culture at Aarhus University invites applications for a postdoctoral position in digital health. The postdoc position is affiliated with the research project ‘PeerCare – Producing continuity of care in peer-led online communities for patients with chronic conditions’ (2021-2023), funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation. Deadline: October 15th |
Lab TA Mace and Lab Manager Merethe are now in the Lab during open hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10.00-14.00. Come by for a chat, some support on your project, or to work in the space! |
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