Paper long abstract:

Researchers are increasingly turning to digital media and social technologies to communicate their research and engage with colleagues. These media and technologies make possible rich data manipulation, support connexions through large networks, sustain data-sharing and syndication and enhance interactivity. However, when it comes to facing outwards, engaging with communities beyond the academic context, our research shows that few researchers suggest digital media and social technologies as routes for engagement with publics.

We have identified that researchers' engagement with digitally engaged research is fostered within a culture in which researchers 'muddle through' together. We will discuss the mutual dependence of 'leaders' who take the lead in digital engagement mechanisms and 'followers', who are nurtured, respond and develop their practice. Digitally engaged research is rarely coherent and consistent across a research group; some researchers are keener than others, some accidentally find themselves in the role of digital leader, some have different experiences of digital engagement and others rely on colleagues to guide them through the maze of tools and techniques.

This paper draws on three strands of empirical evidence from an action research project in a UK university: a series of interviews with research leaders, a survey of research staff and a series of interviews with active researchers. We examine first, researchers' conceptualisation of engaged research, second, their digital engagement activity and finally, offer case studies to illustrate how our reflection on outcomes has fed back into further practice and development.

Paper long abstract:

Proliferation of Open Access repositories at universities, research institutes, and in subject categories (Green Open Access) reveals new challenges to accessing research output. While the total volume of freely accessible literature may be increasing, new attention to Enhanced Publications, which are comprised of digitally linked objects[1], necessitates advanced interoperability schemes to ensure compatibility across the distributed network of repositories. As a consequence, Open Access is increasingly dependent on computer operations and complex interoperability standards that extend beyond use of traditional citation metadata. This problematic of interoperability[2] raises operational questions about Open Access, which have implications for scholarly communication more broadly. On the basis of interoperability, what new forms of scholarly communication are enabled and/or constrained and what are the implications for normal functions of scholarly communication? In this study I examine the transition from citation-level metadata to semantic publishing ontologies for increased interoperability within article content. The empirical material is based on two Open Citation initiatives aimed at facilitating Open Access[3]. Analysis is focused on the relationship between normative claims of openness[4] that underpin Open Access concepts and the evolution of interoperability schemes.

Footnotes:

[1] Woutersen-Windhouwer, et al. 2009. Enhanced Publications: Linking Publications and Research Data in Digital Repositories. Amsterdam University Press

[2] Ribes and Bowker. 2009. "Between Meaning and Machine: Learning to Represent the Knowledge of Communities." Information and Organization 19 (4) (October)

[3] OptCit in 2002 (http://opcit.eprints.org) and Open Citations in 2011 (http://opencitations.net)

[4] Merton. 1973. The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations. University of Chicago Press.

Paper long abstract:

Until recent time, the description, light-modeling and interpretation of socio-cognitive dynamics of science-society relations and social media relationships required a constructivist approach, involving collecting, reading, classifying and interpreting tasks performed by scholars examining sets of digital data (texts, archives, structured databases, websites, blogs, etc.). The growing mass of data produced in the so-called Knowledge Society owes a lot to the acceleration and profusion of digital tools that are now widely used in different areas of human activities: work, culture, leisure, political expression, etc. Social scientists now largely acknowledge that the various modes of interaction brought by new information and communication technologies are changing the very nature of micro-politics and the expression of the self. In our views the conditions for producing knowledge in social sciences and humanities more widely are changed too. New digital infrastructures specifically designed for social sciences and humanities make it possible to equip scientists with tools that enable them to tackle the complexity of heterogeneous textual corpora dynamics and to develop innovative analytical methodologies that will bring new insights and renewed capacities to investigate contemporary issues. The aim of this communication is to propose (1) to discuss some of the epistemic problems that surge from the use of digital platforms ambitioning the development of our capacities of enquiry of knowledge production in society; (2) to present the main developments and experience that had been led within the CorTexT plateform as well as their driving principles.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will discuss 'gains' and 'pains' of the new methodologies introduced by Digital Humanities. Can we use frequency analysis, graphs and data visualizations as supplements to 'classical' methods as e.g. critical discourse analysis? Whereas some authors express concerns about the impact of neoliberalism on Digital Humanities, cyberstructuralists pursue technological optimism arguing that new methods and genres will revive the interest to humanities. Such revival implies the transformation of our approach to studying culture and its artifacts. Data-technological coding and graphical visualizations are meant to enrich the ways of how we perceive and further conceptualize (cultural) phenomena. The discussions within the field of Digital Humanities center around the issues of performativity and materiality of the knowledge, which exists in interactive form.

To study these questions more closely, the paper will present an analysis of a corpus of Norwegian newspapers (1999-2011) concentrating on the issues of 'gender' and 'migration'. The corpus is accessible at the National Library of Norway, which also offers data-technological tools for analysis (e.g. programs as n-gram). The Library is leading in Europe in regards to both, quality and progress of the digitalization process.

Paper long abstract:

Since the mid-2000's, the abundance of digital traces of conversations has been viewed as a crucial opportunity by a fast-growing economic sector, essentially represented by software editors, which claims to access thanks to this data to massive and spontaneous opinions - as opposed to the low-scale and solicited opinions of the polling industry. These companies thus have to deal with the same issues than does the academic research; one of them, well identified by Rogers (2009), is the inscription of the opinions within social groups, given the lack of socio-demographic information about online individuals. Consequently, they must build alternative epistemologies to guarantee - in new ways - the validity of the knowledge they produce about online opinion.

In this communication we will describe how this issue is addressed by a French company named Linkfluence, by showing how, using the same mapping methods used in Digital Humanities, they reorder the online social space around artifacts called "communities", built on the aggregation of the websites' hypertext profiles, allowing them to inscribe opinions into stabilized social forms. Along with Desrosières (2008) and Didier (2009), we want to enter into the very procedures which generate categories of social organization. For this, we draw on theoretical papers produced by our actors and the literature they refer to, but also on a two-month observation conducted in the company's offices. By doing so, we aim to show how this practice of web mapping embeds a social order, based on fluid, elective and action-centered collectives named "communities".

Paper long abstract:

The digitization of cultural heritage is taking a growing importance. Old corpora Archives even became sexy. This renewal is made possible through/by the arrival of new actors and digital tools which are becoming relevant actors on the cultural scene.

But how engineers and IT specialists are working these cultural materials? How do they prepare the future of cultural heritage? And firstly, how do they work on digital material?

We look at the heart of a digitization project concerning the archive from a well-known European jazz festival. We will examine how engineers from a team specialized in signal processing are shaping the digitized video concerts, spanning nearly 50 years and a dozen audio and video formats. We will focus on the indexing part, which consists to identify the musical pieces played (scoring start and end) and tagging events taking place in concert space. Our question is: how engineers define where begins and ends an instrumental piece performed live?

Data come from an ethnographic fieldwork based on participant observation in laboratory life. Taking part actively in the digitizing process, more specifically the indexing, we can realize what guide choices and arbitrations shaping the space of the digitized concert. Thus we see that the ingredients which fix the beginning and end of a musical piece mobilize a vast repertoire of knowledge that goes beyond the signal processing: musical aesthetic, varied musical knowledge. We also show that digital markers shaping the original concert continuum are embedded in the playlist format supporting innovations.

Paper long abstract:

There is an increasing relevance of online social networks (OSN) like Facebook in everyday life. This phenomenon has fueled many scientific studies with the aim to provide a sound understanding of how users manage their interactional privacy in these digital environments.

Three issues stand out in existing work: first, users' privacy strategies rely only to a limited extent on privacy controls provided by the OSN software. Other means such as self-censorship or using multiple OSN accounts supplement, or replace, the use of OSN privacy controls. Second, our means to investigate privacy practices in such online environments are limited. OSN users interact with the software at varying times throughout the day and through user interfaces difficult to oversee by researchers. On the other hand log data analysis neglects the context of users' practices. Third, the contribution of ethnographic user studies to OSN software design remains controversial.

The paper presents results of an ongoing interdisciplinary study between the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology, Darmstadt, and the Department of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. For mapping the interplay of users and technology, we developed a privacy-friendly tracking software that can be added to the web browser of our participants. This data is combined with data from qualitative methods, e.g. interviews and diary studies. We provide results on how our methodological approach allows deeper insights into users' practices, can tackle above-stated methodological challenges, and may eventually inform software design and development.