Hackathons, data and discourse: Convolutions of the data (logical)

This paper draws together empirical findings from our study of hackathons in the UK with literature on big data through three interconnected frameworks: data as discourse, data as datalogical and data as materiality. We suggest not only that hackathons resonate the wider socio-technical and political constructions of (big) data that are currently enacted in policy, education and the corporate sector (to name a few), but also that an investigation of hackathons reveals the extent to which ‘data’ operates as a powerful discursive tool; how the discourses (and politics) of data mask and reveal a series of tropes pertaining to data; that the politics of data are routinely and simultaneously obscured and claimed with serious implications for expertise and knowledge; and that ultimately, and for the vast majority of hackathons we have attended, the discursive and material constructions of data serve to underpin rather than challenge existing power relations and politics

Public Engagement & Cultures of Expertise Scoping Report

This scoping project investigated public, civic and cultural engagement using Leeds as a case study for a wider snapshot of British culture and practices. The scope is broken into three sections. The first looks at formal modes of engagement such as consultation and the power relations of institutions and their publics. The second investigates data itself and the claims made on behalf of digital content in the name of engagement. The third investigates everyday practices of engagement from the perspective of community groups. What is engagement in a digital environment and what does it look like? What new modes and practices of engagement are emerging, and what kinds of cultural products result? What are the implications of these new forms of engagement and new cultural products for communities and cultures

Object Cues for Model-based Image Interpretation

This paper is concerned with generating object cues from grey-level images for use in model-based image interpretation. We describe the idea of local grey-level symmetry and illustrate how points in the grey-level image with this property form local axes of symmetry. These axes together with appropriate scale information form the object cues. The degree of local symmetry in the grey-level image is made explicit by introducing a Centre of Gravity filter. The local axes of symmetry are shown to appear in the centre of gravity image as troughs and a method for labelling the troughs is described. We give results for real images and make an objective comparison with other published methods

The digital mundane, social media and the military

This article draws on empirical data with British military personnel in order to investigate what we call the digital mundane in military life. We argue that social media and smartphone technologies within the military offer a unique environment in which to investigate the ways individual’s position themselves within certain axes of institutional and cultural identities. At the same time, the convolutions, mediatory practices, and mundane social media rituals that service personnel employ through their smartphones resonates widely with, for example, youth culture, digital mobile cultures. Together they suggest complex mediations with social and mobile media, that draws on, and extends non-military practice into new (and increasingly normative) terrains