CISP Online

Blog of the Centre for Invention & Social Process, Goldsmiths

Tag Archives: digital

July 20, 2015
by Noortje Marres
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CSISP/Sociology Lecture by Lucy Suchman on Digital Practices: Some Methodological Reflections

On June 1, 2015, Professor Lucy Suchman delivered the CSISP/Sociology Annual Lecture at Goldsmiths entitled “Digital practices: some methodological reflections.” In this lecture, Suchman returns to her earlier ethnographic research on airline ground operations and the use of CAD software by structural engineers to develop an account of ‘digital practices.’ Connecting her earlier studies with current work on robotic warfare, the lecture outlines some of the important methodological issues these practices have raised and continue to raise in social research as well as in social life.… Continue reading

March 20, 2013
by David Moats
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A Writing Exercise for the Public: Warren Sack on Digital Convergence

Warren Sack‘s lecture at CSISP last week was an invitation to the public to engage with the creative re-appropriation of code. Sack presented a draft chapter of his book on Software Studies as Liberal Arts, in which he aims to present the story of digital convergence in a way that enables the reader to become a new kind of writer and the digital humanities to meet code in new ways.… Continue reading

May 22, 2012
by Anders Koed Madsen
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Pondering the relevance of Cooley´s theory of communication to theorizing web-based visualizations

On May 3rd CSISP hosted a reading group to discuss the relevance of the early 20th century American pragmatist Charles Horton Cooley for theorizing online forms of social inquiry. Like that of other early 20th century thinkers, Cooley’s work offers some promising concepts for exploring the current digital networked context,  such as the notion of the economy of attention. Some contemporary devices of inquiry served as the empirical references in the discussion, namely tools that harness and visualize digital traces left on the web. The last years have seen a rise in the use of such online devices for doing social inquiry within the social sciences (see for instance www.macospol.eu) and in different forms of organizations (see for instance the UN’s www.unglobalpulse.org).… Continue reading

Where does my money go

March 1, 2012
by Joe Deville
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The New in Social Research: Ruppert recording

We are pleased to put online the next in our ‘The New in Social Research’ series, a recording of Evelyn Ruppert’s lecture titled ‘Doing the Transparent State: Methods and their Subjectifying Effects/Affects’ (Feb 28th).

Building on themes explored in the previous talk by Fuller and Harwood, Ruppert looked at the effects (and affects) of the UK government’s data ‘Transparency Agenda’, insisting on the generative capacities of this device. This includes the release of detailed data, via publically accessible, comparatively easy-to-use online platforms (e.g. government produced data apps), ranging from details of MPs expenses to itemised lists of departmental spending. This data, in turn, can be – and increasingly is – downloaded, manipulated and mediated by organisations and institutions, whether by journalists looking to produce eye catching visualisations , or companies hoping to unearth market value hidden in the relations between and amongst different data sets.… Continue reading

February 24, 2012
by Joe Deville
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The New in Social Research: Fuller & Harwood recording

As part of our ongoing series exploring claims to newness in social research, we are pleased to put online a recording of this week’s event (Feb 21st), ‘Database as funfair’.Expenditure data book stabber

Matthew Fuller and Graham Harwood, drawing on work done by YoHa as part of the Invisible Airs project, explored what can be learnt from, and done with, relational databases released to researchers as part of a government drive towards data transparency (themes to be explored further by next week by Evelyn Ruppert – more details about upcoming events are on the CSISP homepage).

Having been given access to the expenditure database of Bristol City Council, they soon worked out that the data – in itself – wasn’t particularly interesting (in fact, as they write, part of the power of this data operates specifically because of its inability to command interest, through the “multiple layers of boredom” which it generates in its readers), to a degree because of what was absent, excluded, or rendered unintelligible.… Continue reading