How Do You Turn a Mobile Device into a Political Tool?

This paper reports on findings from an ongoing study of recent software applications that attempt to turn mobile ICT’s into political tools. The software in question endeavors to make new types of political behavior expressible for ICT users. Two troubling trends were found. The first involves incommensurability between backend databases and the data traces generated by users. The second involves the production of data and metadata vulnerabilities. As part of discussing these trends, the authors introduce the idea of “minor apps” and argue for their importance within discussions of sociotechnical aspects of digital infrastructure

COVID-19 Community Archives and the Platformization of Digital Cultural Memory

In this study we aim to understand how GitHub is used by COVID-19 interest groups for organizing community archives to protect their knowledge from the Chinese government’s censorship efforts. We introduce two case studies of such COVID-19 community archives published with GitHub that appeared online in early 2020. Using public GitHub repository documentation and web archive web crawls from the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, we describe how these digital community archives emerge and exist on the platform, how knowledge of them circulated on other US based social media sites, and show strategies and tactics these volunteers used to keep these community archives alive, resist censorship, and guard the safety of these collections. We argue that these COVID-19 community archives are at risk because of their platform accessibility as much as the content they document, and that understanding how organizers use GitHub’s platform affordances is essential to theorizing how platforms are impacting approaches to preserving cultural memory

Youth Data Literacy: Teen Perspectives on Data Created with Social Media and Mobile Devices

This paper examines how American teens conceptualize the term data in the context of social and mobile media like Instagram and Snapchat, or text messaging and cell phone video. Using interview and ethnographic data from a series of interviews with teens, 11 to 18 held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania public libraries over 2016-2017, we report findings about how teens learn about data through the use of social media platforms, the creation of mobile media, and the ownership of mobile devices; the implications that using networked platforms and wireless technology has for contemporary understandings of data literacy; and finally, what this means for teaching and researching the acquisition of data skills. The paper presents findings about how teens learn and acquire knowledge about the interactive and social processes of the data life cycle in public spaces and in online platforms, particularly learning about data awareness through sharing, aging, and owning mobile computing devices

A Death in the Timeline: Memory and Metadata in Social Platforms

This paper explores a Life Event post from Facebook as a point of departure for critical data studies to understand how social media metadata shapes digital cultural memory and the disciplining of data subjects. I discuss some possible interventions that can contribute to our understanding of metadata’s role in the critical study of data, and in particular, how user generated metadata created in social platforms authored by state actors features in to new forms of information control, civic engagement, and networked information technologies. This discussion includes traditional concepts of concern and analysis for information and archival scholars, including creating data as a new form of belonging in society, collection tools and access policies, and the representation of events with metadata, such as death or state-sanctioned violence. In developing these concepts through a reading of a Life event that announces death and state power over life as it is represented in a social platform, I seek to expand the modes that information scholars use to address issues of time, context, and memory in digital archives and metadata emerging from social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Pre-print first published online 12/20/201

Applying Translational Principles to Data Science Curriculum Development

This paper reports on a curriculum mapping study that examined job descriptions and advertisements for three data curation focused positions: Data Librarian, Data Steward / Curator, and Data Archivist. We present a transferable methodological approach for curriculum development and the findings from our evaluation of employer requirements for these positions. This paper presents " model pathways " for these data curation roles and reflects on opportunities for iSchools to adopt translational data science principles to frame and extend their curriculum to prepare their students for data-driven career opportunities

Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive Aspects of Teen Perspectives on Personal Data in Social Media: A Model of Youth Data Literacy

In this study, we explored the interplay between teens’ Affective states (A), Behavioral states (B), and Cognitive states (C) in relation to the personal data they generate in social media, applying the “ABC model” from the social psychology domain. The data was collected from semi-structured interviews with 22 US teens in three library branches of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, USA. Results from content analysis suggest that: 1) Young people are positive about their data skills, while feeling negative or insecure about data privacy issues; 2) young people with negative affective states related to data privacy are more likely to make an effort to secure their social media accounts and profiles. Given the results, we suggest librarians, educators and software developers apply a range of strategies in reaction to teens’ different ABC states to the design of data literacy programs, services, and software applications

Trace Ethnography Workshop: iConference 2015

This workshop introduces participants to trace ethnography, building a network of scholars interested in the collection and interpretation of trace data and distributed documentary practices. The intended audience is broad, and participants need not have any existing experience working with trace data from either qualitative or quantitative approaches. The workshop provides an interactive introduction to the background, theories, methods, and applications–present and future–of trace ethnography. Participants with more experience in this area will demonstrate how they apply these techniques in their own research, discussing various issues as they arise. The workshop is intended to help researchers identify documentary traces, plan for their collection and analysis, and further formulate trace ethnography as it is currently conceived. In all, this workshop will support the advancement of boundaries, theories, concepts, and applications in trace ethnography, identifying the diversity of approaches that can be assembled around the idea of ‘trace ethnography’ within the iSchool community

Integrating research and teaching for data curation in iSchools

The quickly changing nature of information science and technology creates unique and remarkable challenges in terms of developing curriculum focused on building data competencies. Faculties responsible for teaching current developments in information studies have the unique burden of needing to continuously update our curricula without sacrificing our broader teaching goals. This panel features diverse perspectives on teaching data curation skills in five US‐based schools of information at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Panelists will present their unique perspectives on pedagogical approaches in courses dedicated to data curation, digital preservation, description and access standards, as well as data access and interchange. Topics introduced will range from flipped classroom techniques, finding messy datasets, common pitfalls, hands‐on labs, cloud based tools, data carpentry labs, and sequencing learning objectives to match stages of the data life cycle. This panel will give ASIST conference participants an opportunity to see a range of junior faculty, each with IMLS funded research projects related to data curation, share their experiences of teaching data competencies in the classroom.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163368/2/pra2285.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/163368/1/pra2285_am.pd