Hackathons as Affective Circuits: Technology, organizationality and affect

Technology invites a reconsideration of organization and organizing by calling attention to mediated forms of value production among loose social collectives outside formal organizational boundaries. While the nascent concept of organizationality holds potential for such a re-conceptualization, the processes through which loose social members become invested in co-orientation and collective effort require further empirical and theoretical exploration. In this paper, we link organizationality research with critical media studies on affect and technology to theorize how affect holds provisional collectives together while promoting new modes of value extraction. Empirically, we draw from an ethnographic study of hackathons – transdigital innovation spaces where participants act with and through technology – and suggest three intertwined processes as part of an affective circuit that stokes and directs affect. The paper’s contribution is threefold. First, by analysing how affective circuits bind, integrate and co-orient action among loose members, we contribute to understanding organizationality as affectively constituted. Second, by showing how hackathons leverage desire for community, we offer a critical perspective on affective capture and argue that organizationality involves novel modes of value production. Third, we complement theorizing of hackathons by exploring them as sites of organizationality, focusing on the provisional, relational and affect-rich nature of new forms of organizing in the digital age

Using social media and mobile gaming to improve the vegetable intake of young adults

Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend five servings of vegetables daily for prevention of chronic disease, but only 7% of adults achieve this. The initial stages of this thesis involved secondary analysis of the 2011-12 National Nutrition and Physical Activity Survey data. Results showed young adults aged 18-24 years were the poorest consumers of vegetables, with mean intake of 2.7 serves daily. To inform the design of a targeted intervention using new technology the PhD candidate systematically reviewed the literature and found mobile-phone based interventions have positive effects on vegetable consumption (Cohen’s d 0.15,95% CI 0.04–0.28). Notably, engagement was low among young adults and few studies harnessed novel strategies such as social media or gamification for program delivery. Yet 95% of young adults own a smartphone and 91% use their device for game play or social networking. The final stage of this thesis involved the development of a 4-week social media and mobile-gaming intervention underpinned by behavioural theory, to addresses key barriers to, and psychosocial determinants of, vegetable intake. Behaviour change techniques demonstrated to mediate success, such as goal setting and self-monitoring were integrated. Short mobile-phone delivered cooking videos were developed to address the low level of cooking literacy among this age group, with focus group testing confirming their acceptability among the target audience. A factorial study design was used to determine the feasibility of delivering the program. This was the first study to explore the impact of social support using social media in combination with gaming elements in a nutrition intervention for young adults. The research revealed that it is feasible and practical to deliver behaviour change interventions to young adults using these novel communication mediums. The accessibility of these platforms could allow the dissemination of individual behaviour change interventions at scale

A proposition for bottom-up local community participation through digital mapping

IN ENGLISH: Europeanisation and European urbanistic standards (urban sustainability) have been present in Croatia, as the youngest member, for only a few years, and more declaratively than in practice. Urban renewal, revitalization of cities’ centers and gentrification are therefore intensive processes, primarily economic in nature (with an increased real-estate value), and mostly beneficial for urban policy makers and holders of economic power (investors). Such renewal is often very partial and inconsiderate towards the quality of urban living for citizens, who are mostly excluded from participation without a possibility to influence the future appearance and purpose of space. This is also particularly problematic in peripheral city parts, smaller local communities or neighborhoods, in which residents’ everyday needs are inadequately met. Inadequate infrastructural equipment or reduced public or green areas threaten the basic citizens’ right to well-being. It is therefore possible to strengthen urbanity, as a fundamental measure of a more or less achieved urban living, only through citizens’ greater influence in a bottom-up participation process. Models of bottom-up urban public space design strategies should be adjusted to enter directly into the community and strive towards assisting its residents in making their space more acceptable on everyday level. In the Croatian spatial system, participation is weak, because commercialization and privatization are at the forefront of directing post-socialist countries’ urban development. In this context, the value of public spaces and interests is often destroyed. Examples of civic laboratories as possible models of local community action through applying digital technology would therefore be useful and could serve as examples of good bottom-up practice. Given the massive presence of the Internet and social networks, the main idea is to involve citizens in digital platforms and to design, with urban sociologists’ and architects’ assistance, preliminary research of the situation in every particular neighborhood. The results would be presented, with citizens’ consent, to urban policy and administration representatives to facilitate collaboration. On-line networking of residents and then on-line questionnaires or interviews would initiate the next inevitable phase of bringing residents closer. Such collaboration would motivate residents, but also make city authorities aware of the need to ‘leave the office’ and respond more openly to citizens’ demands, e.g. for improved waste removal and sorting, built or repaired parks and play-grounds, expanded green areas, increased citizens’ traffic safety, etc. Such digital mapping of community and citizens’ principal needs would mean an attempt to improve participation and extend its duration through phases (problem detection, collaboration and implementation). The institutional city authorities’ to-date ambivalence towards citizens can indeed be challenged more easily through digital technology because it implies the possibility of greater democratization. This is why it is important and long-term useful to develop models of civic laboratories, as fundamental participation models, upon which the future appearance and development of cities will depend. --------------- IN CROATIAN: Proces europeizacije i europski urbanistički standardi (urban sustainability) na primjeru HR, kao najmlađe članice, prisutan je tek nekoliko godina i više na deklarativnoj razini nego u praksi. Stoga su primjerice procesi urbane obnove i revitalizacije središta gradova, te gentrifikacije, intenzivni i prvenstveno ekonomske naravi (s povećanom vrijednošću nekretnina) te imaju najveću korist za nositelje urbane politike i nositelje ekonomske moći (investitore). Često je takva obnova vrlo parcijalna i ne uzima u obzir kvalitetu urbanog života za same građane. Oni su uglavnom izostavljeni iz participacijskog procesa i nemaju mogućnost utjecanja na budući izgled i namjenu prostora. To je posebno problematično i u drugim dijelovima grada, manjim lokalnim zajednicama ili susjedstvima, koji na svakodnevnoj razini nedovoljno ispunjavaju potrebe stanovnika. Neadekvatna infrastrukturna opremljenost ili smanjeni javni ili zeleni prostori postaju ugroženi te ugrožavaju i osnovno pravo građana na dobar život. Stoga je urbanitet, kao temeljnu mjeru više ili manje dostignutog urbanog života, moguće ojačati jedino uz veći utjecaj građana u procesu participacije odozdo. Modeli in bottom-up urban public space design strategies trebali bi biti prilagođeni direktnom ulazu u community i nastojati pomoći stanarima da prostor učine prihvatljivijim na svakodnevnoj razini. U hrvatskom prostornom sustavu postoji slab proces participacije jer procesi komercijalizacije i privatizacije (posljedice su poslovna i stambena preizgrađenost) predvode smjer urbanog razvoja postosocijalističkih zemalja. U tom je kontekstu vrijednost javnih prostora i javnih interesa često destruirana. Stoga bi primjeri civic laboratories kao mogućih modela akcije u lokalnoj zajednici kroz korištenje digitalne tehnologije bili korisni i mogli poslužiti kao primjeri dobre prakse odozdo. S obzirom na masovnu prisutnost interneta i društvenih mreža osnovna ideja je da se građani uključe u digitalne platforme te uz stručnu pomoć urbanih sociologa i arhitekata primjerice, osmisle preliminarna istraživanja o stanju u svakom pojedinom kvartu. Dobiveni rezultati u suglasnosti s građanima predstavili bi se predstavnicima urbane politike i administracije kako bi lakše ostvarili suradnju. On-line povezivanje stanara te zatim ispunjavanje on-line ankete ili intervjua prvenstveno bi bile pokretač i za sljedeću fazu koja je nezaobilazna i uključuje upoznavanje i zbližavanje stanovnika samih. Takvom bi se suradnjom pokrenulo stanovnike, ali i osvijestilo gradsku upravu da mora 'izaći iz ureda' i otvorenije odgovarati na zahtjeve građana, primjerice za boljim odvozom i razvrstavanjem otpada, gradnjom ili popravljanjem parkova i dječjih igrališta, povećanjem zelenih površina, povećanja sigurnosti građana u prometu itd. Takvim svojevrsnim digitalnim mapiranjem zajednice i najvažnijih potreba građana pokušalo bi se poboljšati proces participacije i produžiti njegovo trajanje po fazama (faza detektiranja problema, faza suradnje i faza realizacije). Korisno bi bilo usporediti postojeće pozitivne europske primjere participativnih modela kao što su portugalski, španjolski, slovenski, a kako bi se mogli primijeniti i hrvatski lokalni prostor. Dosadašnja podijeljenost institucionalne gradske vlasti spram građana uz digitalnu se tehnologiju zasigurno lakše može pokušati mijenjati jer ona u sebi nosi i mogućnost veće demokratizacije. Upravo je zbog toga važno i dugoročno korisno razvijati modele civic laboratories kao temeljnih participativnih modela o kojima će ovisiti budući izgled i razvoj gradova

Crude Politics: Oil Talk, New Media and Political Scripts in the Production of Disorder in Zinder (Niger)

The nascency of an oil state is characterized by talking oil politics. In this oil talk, the travelling idea of the resource curse takes center stage in speech acts of naming, blaming and claiming to question the legitimacy of political opponents. Conducting a situational analysis, this article focuses on the public political debate about oil in Niger’s media landscape before, during and after the oil refinery’s inauguration ceremony in Zinder in late 2011. I situate the actors’ oil talk according to their positions in the political arena to reveal their hidden transcripts. By doing so, I will show that the oil talk is enacted in a double sense. First, it is the political actors’ scripts that shape the very articulation of their oil talk in a context of political competition in a multi-party system. Second, the oil talk is enacted through an actor-network of media technologies and political players’ access privileges that allow some to articulate their political views whereas others lack the means to do so. I use these findings to discuss the impact of new media in Nigerien politics and to decode the ‘how’ of Nigerien politics itself

Exploring the relationship between geolocated social network service text and crime

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the potential utility of Geocoded Social Network Service datasets, especially geolocated Twitter, to help understand criminal activities in urban settings. In particular, the thesis is concerned with how these datasets can advance understanding of crime events in their spatiotemporal context. Such data has potential to reveal usually unobserved underlying conditions of crime events as a complementary source of knowledge for advancing the development of crime prevention strategies. In pursuit of these goals, the thesis comprises three case studies conducted using data for New York City in the United States. It examines: 1) Mobile dynamic population patterns 2) the emotion patterns of the mobile population, and 3) the attribute patterns of the mobile population (i.e. online-traits such as type and topic of discussion). With the combined results from the three case studies, this thesis explores how adding this new type of data improves existing knowledge of crime patterns. Results demonstrated that tracking spatial-temporal fluctuations of populations, along with their emotions and concerns has potential for explaining patterns across different crime types

From Signal to Social : Steps Towards Pervasive Social Context

The widespread adoption of smartphones with advanced sensing, computing and data transfer capabilities has made scientific studies of human social behavior possible at a previously unprecedented scale. It has also allowed context-awareness to become a natural feature in many applications using features such as activity recognition and location information. However, one of the most important aspects of context remains largely untapped at scale, i.e. social interactions and social context. Social interaction sensing has been explored using smartphones and specialized hardware for research purposes within computational social science and ubiquitous computing, but several obstacles remain to make it usable in practice by applications at industrial scale. In this thesis, I explore methods of physical proximity sensing and extraction of social context information from user-generated data for the purpose of context-aware applications. Furthermore, I explore the application space made possible through these methods, especially in the class of use cases that are characterized by embodied social agency, through field studies and a case study.A major concern when collecting context information is the impact on user privacy. I have performed a user study in which I have surveyed the user attitudes towards the privacy implications of proximity sensing. Finally, I present results from quantitatively estimating the sensitivity of a simple type of context information, i.e. application usage, in terms of risk of user re-identification

Mapping Crisis: Participation, Datafication, and Humanitarianism in the Age of Digital Mapping

This book brings together critical perspectives on the role that mapping people, knowledges and data now plays in humanitarian work, both in cartographic terms and through data visualisations. Since the rise of Google Earth in 2005, there has been an explosion in the use of mapping tools to quantify and assess the needs of the poor, including those affected by climate change and the wider neo-liberal agenda. Yet, while there has been a huge upsurge in the data produced around these issues, the representation of people remains questionable. Some have argued that representation has diminished in humanitarian crises as people are increasingly reduced to data points. In turn, this data becomes ever more difficult to analyse without vast computing power, leading to a dependency on the old colonial powers to refine the data of the poor, before selling it back to them. These issues are not entirely new, and questions around representation, participation and humanitarianism can be traced back beyond the speeches of Truman, but the digital age throws these issues back to the fore, as machine learning, algorithms and big data centres take over the process of mapping the subjugated and subaltern. This book questions whether, as we map crises, it is the map itself that is in crisis

Mapping Crisis

The digital age has thrown questions of representation, participation and humanitarianism back to the fore, as machine learning, algorithms and big data centres take over the process of mapping the subjugated and subaltern. Since the rise of Google Earth in 2005, there has been an explosion in the use of mapping tools to quantify and assess the needs of those in crisis, including those affected by climate change and the wider neo-liberal agenda. Yet, while there has been a huge upsurge in the data produced around these issues, the representation of people remains questionable. Some have argued that representation has diminished in humanitarian crises as people are increasingly reduced to data points. In turn, this data has become ever more difficult to analyse without vast computing power, leading to a dependency on the old colonial powers to refine the data collected from people in crisis, before selling it back to them. This book brings together critical perspectives on the role that mapping people, knowledges and data now plays in humanitarian work, both in cartographic terms and through data visualisations, and questions whether, as we map crises, it is the map itself that is in crisis