“Infrastructural Interventions”: Digital Humanities & Critical Infrastructure Studies Workshop, 21-22nd June 2021

The Department of Digital Humanities, King’s Digital Lab and the Critical Infrastructures Studies Initiative (cistudies.org) are co-hosting an event on “Infrastructural Interventions” on 21-22nd June 2021, organised by Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, Marie Curie Research Fellow at King’s.

The event includes talks and discussions with Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, Alan Liu, Laura Mandell, Matthew K. Gold, Susan Brown, Lauren F. Klein, Paola Ricaurte Quijano, Jonathan Gray, James Smithies, Arianna Ciula and David M. Berry.

Participation is free and you can register here. Further details are copied below. Full abstracts and bios can be found on the Critical Infrastructure Studies website.

The Digital Humanities & Critical Infrastructure Studies Workshop Series aims to enliven discussion about infrastructure from the perspective of Digital Humanities and Social Sciences, as a contribution to the emerging field of Critical Infrastructure Studies. The first workshop in the series, “Infrastructural Interventions,” brings together leading thinkers in Digital Humanities (DH) who interrogate the nature and fragility of infrastructure at individual, social, and planetary scales, and attempt to reconfigure their nature from social justice, feminist and decolonial perspectives. The following questions will guide us through the discussion: How, precisely, did our contemporary digital infrastructure evolve? How are different actors challenging, contesting and creating alternatives to official data infrastructures? How can DH infrastructure be informed by an analysis of power—and even actively challenge existing power imbalances? How might DH infrastructure reject the hierarchical and other divisions that currently structure DH work? How can digital humanists reimagine and rebuild the world differently through infrastructure?

The workshop will take place on the Microsoft Teams platform. (How to join a Teams meeting.) Registration for this event is now open through the Eventbrite. If you have any questions about the event, please don’t hesitate to contact the CIS collective: contact@cistudies.org

Agenda:

21 June, Monday – 17.00 – 20.00 (UK time)

  • 17.00 – 17.10: Introduction by Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, King’s College London, UK
  • 17.10 – 17.50 : Keynote by Alan Liu, University of California, Santa Barbara, US – “Digital Humanities and Critical Infrastructure Studies: An Overview,” 40min (chair: James Smithies)

Abstract: In this talk, Alan Liu provides an introduction to “critical infrastructure studies” and the place of the digital humanities in it. What have been the main approaches to infrastructure that today make the topic of such compelling socio-political, technological, media-informatic, cultural, historical, and artistic interest across the disciplines? How are the digital humanities positioned in relation to those approaches; and what is “critical” about that relation?

Useful links for citations and other material mentioned in the talk:

– CIstudies.org Bibliography: bit.ly/cistudies_biblio

– “CI Studies Primer”: bit.ly/cistudies_primer

– Syllabus for Alan Liu’s 2020 graduate seminar on “Critical Infrastructure Studies”: bit.ly/cistudies_course2020

  • 17.50 – 18.05: Discussion
  • 18.05 – 18.10: Break
  • 18.10 – 19.00: Session (chair: Urszula Pawlicka-Deger)

Laura Mandell, Texas A&M University, US – “Revitalizing the ARC Infrastructure through Linked Open Data”

Matthew K. Gold, CUNY Graduate Center, US – “An Open Opportunity: Free Software, Community-Supported Infrastructure, and the People’s University”

Susan Brown, University of Guelph, Canada – “(Re:)platforming”

  • 19.00 – 19.20: Discussion
  • 19.20 – 19.25: Break
  • 19.25 – 19.55: Projects discussion

Showcasing infrastructure-focused DH projects. More details soon!

  • 19.55 – 20.00: Conclusion

22 June, Tuesday – 17.00 – 19.10 (UK time)

  • 17.00 – 17.05: Introduction by Urszula Pawlicka-Deger, King’s College London, UK
  • 17.05 – 17.50: Session 1 (chair: Urszula Pawlicka-Deger)

Lauren F. Klein, Emory University, US – “What Does Feminist DH Infrastructure Look Like?”

Paola Ricaurte Quijano, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Mexico – “The Fragility of Data and the Right to Infrastructures”

Jonathan Gray, King’s College London, UK – “Missing Data and Making Data: Data Infrastructural Interventions”

  • 17.50 – 18.10: Discussion
  • 18.10 – 18.15: Break
  • 18.15 – 18.45: Session 2 (chair: Arianna Ciula)

James Smithies, King’s College London, UK – “Rewinding our Assumptions: Digital Infrastructure as Emergent Phenomena”

David M. Berry, University of Sussex, UK – “Towards Critical Digital Humanities: Explainability and Interpretability as Critical Infrastructure Practice”

  • 18.45 – 19.05: Discussion
  • 19.05 – 19.10: Conclusion

You can find more details and abstracts on the Critical Infrastructures Studies.org website.

The workshop is part of the MSCA project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 891155.

The MSCA research project website: dhinfra.org.

 

 

New Book: ’Yesterday’s News: The Future of Long-form Journalism and Archives’

A new book by Marco Braghieri entitled ‘Yesterday’s News – The future of long-form journalism and archives’ has been published by Peter Lang.

The book focuses on two entities (long-form journalism and archives) which sit at the intersection between journalistic production and the digital. While framed within digital humanities, this book deploys a number of methods, including text analysis as part of critical discourse analysis, case-study, digital methods, data profiling and data cleaning and semi-structured interviews in order to develop a new framing for long-form journalism and archives within the digital. The latter is the starting point of the book, which is defined as ‘digital landscape’, comprising three main entities (individuals, crowds and platforms). Their interactions have defined and influenced not only the media industry, but also have created new, possible connections between long-form journalism and archives, which are both relevant over time, digitised but not yet datafied entities and share possible new forms of aggregation and curation.

Yesterday's News Cover

The original image used for the cover is the original cover by the Italian graphic designer Giovanni Pintori, who designed the cover of ‘Musica per Parole’, a promotional record sold with the Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter in 1959.
The original image is courtesy of Archivio Storico Olivetti.

The book starts with a definition of the ‘digital landscape’ as “sets of interacting ecosystems”, based on two main features, such as “its nature as constant flux and a disruption enhancer”. Moving on to assess the relationship between this framework and media production, the book provides a definition of long-form journalism and two case studies. It then focuses on digital news outlets archives and their evolution over time. A final case study is then used to assess the possible new forms of aggregation and curation which could be connected to the datafication process regarding both long-form journalism and archives.

While this book tries to establish a framework for the digital and its relationship with contemporary media production, it also attempts to connect digital journalism and platform studies, in order to provide a framing for a multi-method analysis approach to media production in the digital age.

Further information on the book can be found here.

Georgian and Hungarian speaking data assistants needed on the DH project at King’s

We are hiring Georgian and Hungarian speaking data assistants for short-term positions to work on the cross-linguistic project ‘Distant Reading across Languages’ (https://www.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/our-work/distant-reading/). The deadline of applying is 15th May 2021. Please apply via King’s Talent Bank here:

https://www.kingstalentbank.com/jobs/show/11218/hungarian-speaking-data-assistant-on-dh-project

If you have any questions about the positions, do not hesitate to contact Dr Gabriele Salciute Civiliene, PI and Lecturer in Digital Humanities Education, at gabriele.salciute-civiliene@kcl.ac.uk.

Marking work available at KCL in digital media & technology + digital culture

The Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London is looking for hourly paid lecturers to mark essay assignments in the areas of:

  • digital societies and platforms
  • digital economy & innovation
  • internet culture
  • social media and marketing
  • games and virtual realities
  • digital content management
  • digital curation in cultural institutions.

Most assignments are generally 4,000 words long and we calculate the lump sum of an hour (£20.99) per assignment. The work will be available beginning of May with four weeks to return the feedback and marks. The marker will need to demonstrate expertise in their areas and/or a PhD to take on work and have the right to work in the UK.

We look forward to hear from markers who are willing to take on 10/20/30 or 40 assignments. Please contact mercedes DOT bunz AT kcl.ac.uk if you are interested or feel free to forward this blogpost if anyone comes to mind.

The international Martha Cheung Award for research excellence in the paper on cross-linguistic modelling and computing received by Dr Gabriele Salciute Civiliene

Dr Gabriele Salciute Civiliene, Lecturer in Digital Humanities Education at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, has been announced the winner of the 2021 Martha Cheung Award for Best English Article in Translation Studies by the SISU Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, Shanghai International Studies University. The Award is established in honour of the late Professor Martha Cheung, formerly Chair Professor of Translation at Hong Kong Baptist University, for her seminal contribution to the reconceptualization of translation from non-Western perspectives. The Martha Cheung Award is one of the top awards in the field.

Gabriele Salciute Civiliene

Gabriele’s article “Between Surface and Depth: Towards embodied ontologies of text computing across languages”, published in Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 45/2 (2020), has been praised on the Award page as “a highly original, interdisciplinary contribution that offers new insights into the study of translation. It provides a critical consideration of what underlies the epistemo-methodological impasses of the mainstream approach to repetition in translation studies, and considers the possibility of a new practice for cross-linguistic quantitative reading. The article demonstrates how data visualization based on the computational analysis of translated text can illuminate our understanding of cognition and perception. Translation theory is shown to present an interesting problem for the Digital Humanities, one that fundamentally complicates text computing and challenges the flat dimensions of quantification. Dr. Salciute Civiliene draws on her research into the design of cross-linguistic distant reading and the modelling of repetition strings as equivalents of dynamic translatorial response to argue for and demonstrate the possibility of thick computing as suspended between textual surfaces and depths.”

New edition of Data Journalism Handbook now open access with Amsterdam University Press

This blog is cross-posted from lilianabounegru.org which also includes additional images and media. These can also be viewed in this thread.

Today The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards a Critical Data Practice (co-edited with Jonathan Gray) is published on Amsterdam University Press. It is published as part of a new book series on Digital Studies which is also being launched today. You can find the book here, including an open access version: http://bit.ly/data-journalism-handbook-2

The book provides a wide-ranging collection of perspectives on how data journalism is done around the world. It is published a decade after the first edition (available in 14 languages) began life as a collaborative draft at the Mozilla Festival 2011 in London.

Book sprint at MozFest 2011 for first edition of Data Journalism Handbook.

The new edition, with 54 chapters from 74 leading researchers and practitioners of data journalism, gives a “behind the scenes” look at the social lives of datasets, data infrastructures, and data stories in newsrooms, media organizations, startups, civil society organizations and beyond.

The book includes chapters by leading researchers around the world and from practitioners at organisations including Al Jazeera, BBC, BuzzFeed News, Der Spiegel, eldiario.es, The Engine Room, Global Witness, Google News Lab, Guardian, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), La Nacion, NOS, OjoPúblico, Rappler, United Nations Development Programme and the Washington Post.

An online preview of various chapters from book was launched in collaboration with the European Journalism Centre and the Google News Initiative and can be found here.

The book draws on over a decade of professional and academic experience engaging with the field of data journalism, including through my role as Data Journalism Programme Lead at the European Journalism Centre; my research on data journalism with the Digital Methods Initiative; my PhD research on “news devices” at the universities of Groningen and Ghent; and my research, teaching and collaborations around data journalism at the Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London.

Further background about the book can be found in our introduction. Following is the full table of contents and some quotes about the book. We’ll be organising various activities around the book in coming months, which you can follow with the #ddjbook hashtag on Twitter.

If you adopt the book for a class we’d love to hear from you so we can keep track of how it is being used (and also update this list of data journalism courses and programmes around the world) and to inform future activities in this area. Hope you enjoy it!

Continue reading “New edition of Data Journalism Handbook now open access with Amsterdam University Press”

Ethics of vaccine passports and COVID status apps by Btihaj Ajana

In response to Ada Lovelace Institute’s call for public evidence regarding the vaccine passports and COVID status apps, Dr Btihaj Ajana, Reader in Media and Digital Culture at the Department of Digital Humanities, recently submitted some critical reflections on the ethical implications of these technologies and proposals.

Here is a summary of submission:

Discrimination and inequality

I believe that the deployment of Covid-19 vaccine passports and status apps for governing movement and access to certain spaces and services will inevitably create new forms of discrimination while exacerbating exiting ones. First of all, it should be borne in mind that, for the time being, not all countries in the world have equal access to the new Covid-19 vaccines nor the equal economic capacity to acquire the needed doses to immunise the whole population. For instance, many low-income countries will be relying on COVAX which can only achieve 20% vaccination coverage (see www.gavi.org). This, as scientific studies indicate, is not enough for achieving herd immunity through vaccination. As a result, people from such countries are likely to have their freedom of travel severely restricted as a result of the potential imposition of vaccine passports worldwide.

Also, such developments need to be regarded as part of the historical and social contexts (not just in terms of the current Covid-19 situation). We are already living in a “world apartheid” whereby the amalgamation of borders, passports, and biometric technologies has been instrumental in creating a dual regime of circulation and an international class differentiation through which some nations can move around and access services with ease while others are excluded and made to endure an “excess of documentation and securitisation” (because of their nationality, socio-economic standing, etc. and soon likely, because of their vaccine status). Introducing Covid-19 vaccine passports and status apps as “tokens of freedom” will add yet another layer of inequality and discrimination, the consequences of which are likely to outlive the pandemic itself. 

Digital divide and technological determinism

The proposal for introducing vaccine status apps assumes that everyone has or wants a smartphone. There is a high level of technological determinism currently dominating the debates on these issues and which seems to ignore that the digital divide still exists in the world. Making freedom of travel and right to access services and spaces contingent on having a digital vaccination passport and a status app is inherently exclusionary. Already the deployment of contact tracing apps has revealed the flaws of such technologies. In Spain for instance, Radar Covid, the official contact tracing app, is not operational on older iPhone models. Travellers to Spain must download and use the app, but if their smartphone is an older model, then they cannot use the app. Similarly, and as stated on NHS website, the Covid-19 app does not work on all phones: “Older models of Apple (iPhone 5S and iPhone 6/6Plus or earlier) and Android phones that do not support iOS 13.5 or Android 6.0 (Marshmallow) and higher will not be able to use the app. Windows phones and new models of Huawei smartphones launched from May 2019 will also not be able to use the app. This is because your phone needs access to the Apple App Store, or Google Play Services, to be able to download the NHS COVID-19 app.”

As such, technological affordances also play a role in shaping the use, access and experience of Covid-19 related apps, and can thereby lead to forms of exclusion.  Furthermore, the imposition of digital vaccine passports and status apps also seems to ignore that some people do not wish to have their everyday activities completely dependent on a digital app or a certificate. The right to be disconnected from the digital world and its big data machine, as hard as it is in today’s world, should still be respected and protected.

Function creep

The issue of function creep refers to when a certain technology gets repurposed and used for something other than its intended use. We have seen time and again throughout the recent decades how practices and mechanisms that are initially designed for specific exceptional circumstances end up becoming routine and widespread across the entire fabric of society. One example is to do with the application of biometric technology. The initial social and political use of biometrics was limited to exceptional spaces and extreme cases, such as detention centres and crime investigations. Over the years, biometrics became more widely used so much so that it is now embedded in everyday products and services.  We use biometric fingerprints and facial recognition to unlock our phones or log into our bank accounts; we use MobilePay to purchase our morning coffee; voice recognition to interact with virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant, and so on. Technologies that would have seemed intrusive a few years ago are so commonplace today. And with the current technologies being developed to manage people’s health status through biometric apps, we are likely to see a similar function creep and repurposing that may well outlive the pandemic itself, raising questions about privacy, human rights and data protection.

A false sense of protection

Scientific evidence concerning the efficacy of new covid-19 vaccines in terms of preventing infection and transmission is still hazy. As Hodgson et al. argue, assessment of the efficacy of Covid-19 vaccine is particularly complex given that the fundamental understanding of the pathogen is still evolving. There is an urgent need for critical and scientifically rigorous appraisals of the efficacy outcomes of these newly developed Covid-19 vaccines before rushing to implement vaccine passports and status apps. Otherwise, there is a risk that the implementation of these mechanisms might end up giving a false sense of safety and protection while there is not yet a conclusive evidence that someone who is vaccinated cannot pass on the virus to others.

Overall, I believe that the implementation of Covid-19 vaccine passports and status apps carries several risks with potentially harmful consequences for individuals and societies.

Btihaj Ajana, February 2021

 

 

New article: “Immunitarianism: defence and sacrifice in the politics of Covid-19” by Btihaj Ajana

Photo credit: Monica Bobe

Dr Btihaj Ajana, Reader in Media and Digital Culture at the Department of Digital Humanities, has recently published a research article entitled, “Immunitarianism: defence and sacrifice in the politics of Covid-19” in History and Philosophy of Life Sciences journal.

Full article can be accessed on: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40656-021-00384-9

Article Abstract:

As witnessed over the last year, immunity emerged as one of most highly debated topics in the current Covid-19 pandemic. Countries around the globe have been debating whether herd immunity or lockdown is the best response, as the race continues for the development and rollout of effective vaccines against coronavirus and as the economic costs of implementing strict containment measures are weighed against public health costs. What became evident all the more is that immunity is precisely what bridges between biological life and political life in the current climate, be it in terms of the contentious notion of herd immunity, the geopolitical struggle for vaccines, or the possible emergence of “Covid-elite”, i.e. holders of so-called “immunity passports”. Immunity, as such, is certainly not only a matter of science and biology alone, but is inherently political in the way that pandemics themselves are often highly politicised. Drawing on the work of Roberto Esposito and other literature from the field of biopolitics and immunology, this paper provides a critical examination of the concept of immunity in light of the recent events, highlighting the intersections between the politics of defence and the politics of sacrifice which animate governments’ immunitary responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. The paper ends with a discussion on the forms of solidarity and local initiatives that have been mobilised during the current pandemic and their potential for an affirmative form of biopolitics. Overall, the main aim of this paper is to provide a critical cultural and philosophical analysis of Covid-19 debates and responses and a nuanced account on the biopolitical effects of the current pandemic, highlighting the paradoxical nature of immunity which straddles at once negative practices of defence and sacrifice as well as affirmative forms of community and solidarity beyond state apparatuses.

 

Openings for Two New Professorships in “Digital Technology in Culture and Society” and “Critical Digital Practice” and One Senior Lecturer/Lecturer Post in “Digital Culture and Society”

Last year we started a hiring process for two new professorships in the Department of Digital Humanities, which was unfortunately interrupted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are delighted to announce that we will be resuming search for these two professorial posts, plus an additional Senior Lecturer/Lecturer position in Digital Culture and Society. As before if there are any enquiries, please do get in touch!

The Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London is looking for two full Professors and one Senior Lecturer/Lecturer to join us. They will contribute to developing research, teaching and collaborations to facilitate “critical inquiry with and about the digital”. The new posts are as follows:

King’s College London has a long tradition of research in the digital humanities, going back to the early 1970s. Building on the department’s expertise in digital information management, digital research methods and humanities computing from the early 1990s, it has grown to become a world leader in research on digital humanities, culture and society. Following several hiring rounds in the past few years, the department has a diverse community of scholars, undergraduates and graduate students exploring the role of digital technology in society from a humanities perspective, informed by a variety of different fields. This includes our BA in Digital Culture, MA Programmes in Big Data in Culture & Society, Digital Culture & Society  and Digital Asset & Media Management, as well as MA/PhD research degrees in Digital Humanities. The two hires will join at an exciting time for the department and will help to shape its future direction and activities.

Continue reading “Openings for Two New Professorships in “Digital Technology in Culture and Society” and “Critical Digital Practice” and One Senior Lecturer/Lecturer Post in “Digital Culture and Society””

Call for Papers: “Critical Technical Practice(s) in Digital Research”, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies

A call for papers on “Critical Technical Practice(s) in Digital Research” has just been published by Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, for a special issue edited by Jonathan Gray (Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London), Daniela van Geenen (University of Siegen) and Dr. Karin van Es (Utrecht University). The text of the call is available here and copied below.

Continue reading “Call for Papers: “Critical Technical Practice(s) in Digital Research”, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies”