Interrogating Datafication - (Media in Action) (Paperback)

About the Book

What constitutes a data practice and how do contemporary digital media technologies reconfigure our understanding of practices in general? This volume collects theoretical, empirical, and historiographical contributions from a range of international scholars to shed light on the current shift from media to data practices.

Book Synopsis

What constitutes a data practice and how do contemporary digital media technologies reconfigure our understanding of practices in general? Autonomously acting media, distributed digital infrastructures, and sensor-based media environments challenge the conditions of accounting for data practices both theoretically and empirically. Which forms of cooperation are constituted in and by data practices? And how are human and nonhuman agencies distributed and interrelated in data-saturated environments? The volume collects theoretical, empirical, and historiographical contributions from a range of international scholars to shed light on the current shift from media to data practices.

About the Author

Marcus Burkhardt is a lecturer in the media studies department at the University of Siegen. Together with Karin Knorr Cetina, he heads the project "Agentic Media: Formations of Semi-Autonomy" in the SFB 1187 "Media of Cooperation". He has a background in media studies, philosophy, and computer science and received his doctorate at Justus-Liebig-University Gießen with a thesis on the media theory of digital databases. His research interests include the history and theory of digital media, especially the logi(sti)cs of database technologies, big data, and algorithmic media as well as digital methods.

Daniela van Geenen is a PhD-candidate at the DFG Locating Media Graduate School (University of Siegen). She investigates "critical technical practice" in the context of sensor-based technologies and sensing infrastructures locating, making accessible, and governing everyday life, urban spaces, and practices. She is also a lecturer in data journalistic practice and data visualization at the University of Applied Sciences Utrecht. Her research interests include critical data and software studies, digital methods, and tool criticism.

Carolin Gerlitz is a professor of digital media and methods at the University of Siegen and member of the Digital Methods Initiative Amsterdam. She is co-speaker of the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1187 "Media of Cooperation" and the DFG Graduate School "Locating Media". Her research interests are social media and platform studies, app studies, inventive digital methods, sensor media, quantification, automation, and issue mapping.

Sam Hind is a research associate in the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1187 "Media of Cooperation" at the University of Siegen. His research currently revolves around sensor-based navigation as part of the "Navigation in Online/Offline Spaces" project. He received his PhD in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick, UK. His research interests include digital navigation, mapping practices and mobility.

Timo Kaerlein is a research coordinator at the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1187 "Media of Cooperation" at the University of Siegen. He has a background in media studies and received his doctorate at Paderborn University in 2017. His research focuses on the theory, history, and aesthetics of interfaces, mobile media, social robotics, and media cultures of obsolescence.

Danny Lämmerhirt is a PhD-Candidate at the Graduate School (University of Siegen) with an interest in the politics of participatory data infrastructures, data governance, quantification, and valuation. His dissertation compares different citizen-centered data sharing models for digital health data, exploring how these models enable cooperation, governance, and the valuation of health data along multiple (possibly conflicting) interests.

Axel Volmar is a postdoctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Center 1187 "Media of Cooperation" at the University of Siegen. From 2014 to 2016, he was a mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University. His research interests include the history and theory of digital media, sound media and auditory culture, digital time and format theory. His current research project focuses on the histories of audiovisual telecommunications.