Policy Skills for Web Scientists

Practical group based work on reading and interrogating evidence and writing policy briefings/critique

Posters for Web Science DTC Industrial Day

These posters were created by Web Science MSc and PhD students as a discussion point with representatives from the DTC Industrial Advisory Group

A manifesto for Web Science

A clarion call for a new research agenda has been sounded, notably by Berners-Lee et al (2006a 2006b) and Hendler et al (2008) for a ‘science of decentralised information systems’ to ‘discover’ generative mechanisms, and synthesise knowledge and technology to push both forwards. Computer Science alone - focussing as it does on the engineering/technology of the web - could not deliver the ambitions of this new agenda. Equally, other disciplines implicated in Web Science might use the web to support their research, or be interested in virtual life, but they lacked a coherent or unifying mandate for engaging with the web. By calling for Web Science these pioneers opened up a new space. But this is uncharted terrain. As a technology the web is still new. While it has grown rapidly and unexpectedly we are only just beginning to think about the web as a phenomena to be studied. The proponents of Web Science had the vision to see that this new approach had to include disciplines beyond their own; it had to be greater than the sum of the parts of individual disciplines. This is a radical call to leave disciplinary silos and work collaboratively to produce something bigger and better. Moreover, it takes in the founding principles of the web and a desire for a web that is pro-human: this is a call for a science that is capable of insight and intervention to create a better world. Our paper aims to take up this challenge and suggests how we might map the Web Science terrain. We come at this from a slightly different direction to the web science pioneers and want to demonstrate how social science can, and indeed must, contribute to developing Web Science. This paper will explore the contribution of social theory and sociological concepts that shape how we engage with the web. We focus on four key aspects which seem to be central to this understanding. Firstly co-constitution, the fact that the web both shapes and is shaped by humans/society. Secondly the importance of heterogeneous networks of multiple and diverse actors (including technologies themselves) that make the web as we know it. Thirdly the significance of performativity, that the web is an unfolding, enacted practice, as people interact with http to build ‘the web’ moment by moment. Finally, drawing these ideas together we see the web we have now as an immutable mobile or temporarily stabilised network. We use these ideas to map what web science could be and to suggest how we might use sociology to understand the web. Our aim is to provoke and stimulate debate and to move beyond superficial popular psychology and sociology (which envisages engineering human behaviour) and to challenge some of the ways in which social science has engaged with technology and technical actors. To facilitate this, and taking our lead from Donna Harroway, the paper sets out a radical manifesto for web science

Woman Against Woman - Geraldine Jewsbury vs Florence Marryat

Florence Marryat (1833-99) was a novelist, editor, playwright, spiritualist, singer and actress. She wrote nearly seventy novels during her varied career, most of which were dismissed by critics but loved by her reading public. Much of the opprobrium aimed at her originated from fellow women authors such as Eliza Lynn Linton and Marie Corelli, but it was Geraldine Jewsbury who launched the strongest attack on Marryat’s “shocking violations of good taste”. This paper will look at Jewsbury’s role as publisher’s reader for Bentley & Son in which she substantially revised the text of Marryat’s first novel, Love’s Conflict (1865). Shocked by its themes of prostitution, alcoholism, murder, extra-marital sex and domestic violence, Jewsbury convinced Richard Bentley that the novel would cause outrage unless her changes were implemented. Although Marryat compromised on many of the suggestions, I will argue that in subsequent early novels she resisted critics’ attempts to shape her work and also retracted the concessions she had made to Jewsbury

Who Pays for the Butter? Florence Marryat and the Married Women’s Property Acts

Whereas many women writers were reticent on the issue of property, or vehemently opposed to improving the position of wives, Florence Marryat used her public platform to campaign for change. As such, her work forms an important contribution to our understanding of women and property in the nineteenth century. In this paper I discuss the ways in which Marryat engaged with the debates surrounding married women’s property, arguing that her fiction was more progressive than that of her contemporaries. I show how her polemical writing brought proto-feminist ideas to an audience they would not otherwise have reached. Through archival research, I also demonstrate how Marryat’s own life informed her writing and how she shared her own difficulties in order to educate readers

“More like a woman stuck into boy’s clothes”: Sexual deviance in Florence Marryat’s Her Father’s Name

Her Father’s Name (1876) is one of Marryat’s most radical and intriguing novels, featuring Leona Lacoste, a cross-dressing heroine, and Lucilla Evans, a textbook hysteric who falls in love with her. For centuries, the diagnosis of ‘hysteria’ was conveniently applied to any woman who exhibited transgressive behaviour, whether it be through sexual promiscuity or simply by expressing strong opinions. As I argue in this paper, Marryat uses her novel to reveal how in the late nineteenth century, hysteria was clearly linked with lesbianism and used to pathologise sexual deviance. Using the character of a family doctor, Marryat shows how the medical profession operated to regulate gender, expose artifice, and restore patients to ‘normative’ sexuality. I discuss how the doctor is thwarted by the willingness of the other characters to collude in Leona’s disguise - they accept both her transvestism and her often reciprocal attraction to women. Whereas in many contemporary novels masculine women are feared and derided as vectors of lesbian contagion, Leona is portrayed as an entirely sympathetic character. Through her, Marryat allows women a greater range of sexual expression, presenting lesbianism as an alternative to heterosexual marriage, rather than as an ugly subversion of the feminine ideal. Leona’s protean nature, I propose, allows Marryat to explore radical ideas in what is, on the surface, a pantomimic text, but one that yields deeply subversive readings. In Leona she presents a heroine who comprehensively challenges prevailing notions of both femininity and sexuality

Using mixed methods to track the growth of the Web: tracing open government data initiatives

In recent years, there have been a rising number of Open Government Data (OGD) initiatives; a political, social and technical movement armed with a common goal of publishing government data in open, re-usable formats in order to improve citizen-to-government transparency, efficiency, and democracy. As a sign of commitment, the Open Government Partnership was formed, comprising of a collection of countries striving to achieve OGD. Since its initial launch, the number of countries committed to adopting an Open Government Data agenda has grown to more than 50; including countries from South America to the Far East.Current approaches to understanding Web initiatives such as OGD are still being developed. Methodologies grounded in multidisciplinarity are still yet to be achieved; typically research follows a social or technological approach underpinned by quantitative or qualitative methods, and rarely combining the two into a single analytical framework. In this paper, a mixed methods approach will be introduced, which uses qualitative data underpinned by sociological theory to complement a quantitative analysis using computer science techniques. This method aims to provide an alternative approach to understanding the socio-technical activities of the Web. To demonstrate this, the activities of the UK Open Government Data initiative will be explored using a range of quantitative and qualitative data, examining the activities of the community, to provide a rich analysis of the formation and development of the UK OGD community