Critical realism and digital social science
This is a webinar I did in 2018 for the Critical Realism network. I thought it had been lost so I’m pleased to be able to post it online:
The Journal of Digital Social Research has launched!
The Journal of Digital Social Research publishes high-quality articles within all areas of digital social research, including sociology, informatics, pedagogy, education science, gender studies, law, economy, social work and geography. We welcome and encourage cross-disciplinary submissions. JDSR is a true open access journal. JDSR is supported by a strong international […]
CFP: Intersectional Automations
This looks like such an important project. I’d love to try and write something, if I hadn’t realised that I’ll never finish my book projects if I don’t stop writing book chapters: Intersectional Automations: Robotics, AI, Algorithms, and Equity Edited Collection (Abstracts Due 1 April 2019) This collection will explore […]
Fascinating call for papers on infrastructural politics
This looks like a really exciting special issue, not least of all for being in a cultural studies journal. It will be interesting to see how people respond to this and the extent to which it ends up containing internet research with a little bit of cultural studies tacked on. […]
Where do data scientists come from?
A few years ago, I was preoccupied by this question after an illuminating six months working in the Data Science Lab at Warwick Business School. I co-organised a ground breaking conference in computational social science and it was clear this represented a mode of expertise distinct from what I had […]
Socialising the machines
I’m saving these two CfPs for my own reference but I suspect others might find them interesting: Call for Papers Envisioning Social Robotics: Current Challenges and New Interdisciplinary Methodologies Special issue of Interaction Studies Guest Editors: Glenda Hannibal & Astrid Weiss Submission Deadline: November 1st, 2018 We find in social […]
Defending the social at #undisciplining
Notes for the closing panel at Undisciplining Today’s session has a twofold purpose. It’s intended as a celebration of the paper which was awarded The Sociological Review’s prize for outstanding scholarship last year. But it’s also a continuation of the opening session, extending the discussion while introducing some new elements. It […]
Big data, human agency, critical realism and the future of the social sciences
I’m doing a webinar tomorrow as part of the Critical Realism Network series which I’m really looking forward to. It draws together much of my work, encompassing my contributions to the Centre for Social Ontology’s social morphogenesis and humanism projects, the Accelerated Academy, the Digital Social Science project I ran […]
Digital social science as a meta-field
For the last few years, I’ve taken to talking about digital social science. I mean this partly as a short-hand to refer to a whole range of (sub)disciplines and (sub)fields which have emerged in response to the challenge of ‘the digital’: data science, computational social science, web science, internet studies, digital […]
Xerox PARC and the challenge of building a community of inquiry
In TroubleMakers, Leslie Berlin offers a gripping account of the formation of Xerox PARC. This famous lab was responsible for a dizzying array of innovations, listed on Wikipedia as including “laser printing, Ethernet, the modern personal computer, graphical user interface (GUI) and desktop paradigm, object-oriented programming, ubiquitous computing, electronic paper, amorphous silicon […]
Social listening and reclaiming the future
The dynamics of discipline formation
As anyone reading this blog regularly will be aware, I’m very interested in the dynamics of discipline formation and the implications they have for the capacity of the social sciences to respond to changing circumstances. There are a variety of mechanisms which emerge from organised knowledge production and operate to […]
Social listening and the black health economy
In his The New Poverty, Stephen Armstrong introduces the disturbing case of DIY dentistry. These practices are clearly growing yet the methodological incapacity of existing approaches means there’s little to no systemic evidence about this growth. From loc 863-882: Accurate figures on the extent of DIY dentistry are hard to find. […]
Emerging technologies, academic celebrities and the social organisation of disciplines
In his contribution to the Centre for Social Ontology’s workshop on human enhancement, Doug Porpora presented his initial results from an analysis of the emerging literature on human enhancement. He observed that this literature is scattered throughout many journals across disciplines, rather than featuring in the central journals of any […]
CfP: Co-design Special Issue – Repositioning CoDesign in the age of platform capitalism: from sharing to caring
CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts Contribute to our special issue on “Repositioning Codesign in the Age of Platform Capitalism: From Sharing to Caring” http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/est/jmi02301-nsdn-si-sept-2017/ Potential authors should contact the guest editors at codesignsharingcaring@m-iti.org<mailto:codesignsharingcaring@m-iti.org> with any questions about the Special Issue. In this special issue, we are […]
Call for Papers: “Research Synthesis” and “Big Data in Psychology”
I’m interested in how big data is developing within psychology: 1) For “Hotspots in Psychology 2019” (guest editors: Michael Bosnjak & Timo Gnambs) we are looking für meta-analyses and systematic reviews (including methodological studies) from all areas of psychology: https://conferences.leibniz-psychology.org/documents/zfp_a000294.pdf 2) For “Big Data in Psychology: Methods and Applications” (guest […]
How can the social sciences keep up with socio-technical change?
At a recent symposium I saw Ben Williamson give an excellent lecture about the rapidly developing field of educational data science and how it is reshaping educational practice. Some of the material is summarised here for those interested. It was a really broad overview of these developments and the theoretical challenges we […]
Public engagement, social media and university boundaries
In her wonderful Lower Ed, Tressie Cottom describes how her public profile led to her being in contact with someone who was enormously relevant to her ongoing research. From pg 103: Aaron found me through my public writing and blogging and social media and decided that speaking to me might […]
The ‘Sharing Economy’ as Disembedding Mechanism
As some reading this may be aware, I’m fairly critical of the account Giddens gives of late modernity, seeing it as a wrong-turning for many qualitative researchers who sought to situate their findings in a socio-historical context. Nonetheless, I’ve been thinking recently about the concept of the disembedding mechanism and how it […]
Digital Methodologies
In September 2016, I organised a stream on Beyond Big & Small Data at the ISA Logic and Methodologies conference, with Christian Bokhove, Sarah Lewthwaite and Richard Wiggins. The stream was a collaboration between the International Journal for Social Research Methodology and the now defunct Digital Social Science Forum. The podcasts […]
