How Data-Driven Research Fuelled the Cambridge Analytica Controversy

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When open source design is vital: critical making of DIY healthcare equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic

Shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) and medical devices needed during the COVID-19 pandemic were widely reported in early 2020. In response, civic DIY volunteers explored how they could produce the required equipment. Members of communities such as hacker- and makerspaces employed their skills and tools to manufacture, for example, face shields and masks. The article discusses these civic innovation practices and their broader social implications by relating them to critical making theory. Methodologically, it is based on a digital ethnography approach, focusing on hacker and maker communities in the UK. Communities’ DIY initiatives display characteristics of critical making and ‘craftivism’, as they assessed and counteracted politicised healthcare supply shortages. It is argued that their manufacturing activities during the COVID pandemic relate to UK austerity politics’ effects on healthcare and government failure to ensure medical crisis supplies. Facilitated by open source design, communities’ innovation enabled healthcare emergency equipment. At the same time, their DIY manufacturing raises practical as well as ethical issues concerning, among other things, efficacy and safety of use

The Big Data Agenda

"This book highlights that the capacity for gathering, analysing, and utilising vast amounts of digital (user) data raises significant ethical issues. Annika Richterich provides a systematic contemporary overview of the field of critical data studies that reflects on practices of digital data collection and analysis. The book assesses in detail one big data research area: biomedical studies, focused on epidemiological surveillance. Specific case studies explore how big data have been used in academic work. The Big Data Agenda concludes that the use of big data in research urgently needs to be considered from the vantage point of ethics and social justice. Drawing upon discourse ethics and critical data studies, Richterich argues that entanglements between big data research and technology/ internet corporations have emerged. In consequence, more opportunities for discussing and negotiating emerging research practices and their implications for societal values are needed. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. More information about the initiative and details about KU's Open Access programme can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org.

Introduction: inequalities and divides in digital cultures

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Hacking events: project development practices and technology use at hackathons

Hackathons are techno-creative events during which participants get together in a physical location. They may be hosted by civic communities, corporations or public institutions. Working individually or in teams, usually for several days, participants develop projects such as hardware or software prototypes. Based on a digital ethnography of two events in the Netherlands and Denmark, this article investigates project development practices at hackathons. In particular, it analyses how participants organized their project work and which technologies were used in support of their creative endeavours. Hackathons are increasingly competitive rather than collaborative events, involving time pressure, inducements such as prizes, and requiring efficient skills utilization. I argue that this facilitates the following tendencies: Firstly, strategic effort is put into final presentations. Projects need to be convincingly presented, and persuasively pitching an idea becomes crucial. Secondly, there is only limited time for personal learning, since participants’ existing skills need to be efficiently applied if a team wants to stay competitive. This encourages division of labour within groups: a tendency which seems especially problematic given that IT skills biases are often expressed in terms of gender. Thirdly, participants are more inclined to use technologies that are proprietary but appear ‘open enough’. In light of this observation and by drawing on the concept of technology as resource and opportunity, I discuss the techno-political implications of utilized technologies. With this analysis, I aim at contributing to the critical debate on hackathons as productive but likewise ideologically significant fields of ‘hacking cultures’

Vom Feld zum Labor und zurück

Prof. Dr. Jens Schröter ist Herausgeber der Reihe und die Herausgeber der einzelnen Hefte sind renommierte Wissenschaftler und -innen aus dem In- und Ausland.Mitglieder des Siegener DFG-Graduiertenkollegs Locating Media betrachten das Verhältnis "Labor" und "Feld" aus der Sicht ihrer jeweiligen Dissertations- bzw. Habilitationsprojekte auf je verschiedene Weise: manchmal eng angelehnt an konkrete Feld- und Laborforschung, manchmal durch metaphorische Wendung der Grundfrage "Vom Feld zum Labor und zurück"

Tracing controversies in hacker communities: ethical considerations for internet research

This paper reflects on the ethics of internet research on community controversies. Specifically, it focuses on controversies concerning gendered, social interaction in hacking communities. It addresses the question how internet researchers should treat and represent content that individuals controversially discussed online. While many internet sources are likewise technically public, they may yet suggest distinct privacy expectations on the part of involved individuals. In internet research, ethical decision-making regarding which online primary sources may be, e.g., referenced and quoted or require anonymisation is still ambiguous and contested. Instead of generalisable rules, the context dependence of internet research ethics has been frequently stressed. Given this ambiguity, the paper elaborates on ethical decisions and their implications by exploring the case of a controversial hackerspaces.org mailing list debate. In tracing data across different platforms, it analyses the emerging ethico-methodological challenges

The Big Data Agenda: Data Ethics and Critical Data Studies

While working on this book, I have immensely benefitted from the fantastic support of many peers, colleagues and friends. I am very grateful for their advice and encouragement. I would also like to thank those who have contributed to big data discourses, ethics and critical data studies: their insights and their initiation of much-needed debates were invaluable for my work. I am very grateful to my colleagues at Maastricht University’s Faculty of Arts & Social Science. Although more colleagues deserve gratitude, I would particularly like to thank Sally Wyatt, Anna Harris, Vivian van Saaze, Tamar Sharon, Tsjalling Swierstra and Karin Wenz. Their work, advice and support were crucial for this project. My sincere thanks go to Sally Wyatt for her advice and for endorsing my application for a Brocher fellowship. This 1-month visiting fellowship at the Brocher Foundation (www.brocher.ch) allowed me to focus on my book and I would like to thank the foundation as well as its staff. In addition, I tremendously appreciated and enjoyed the company of and the discussions with the other fellows; among them were Laura Bothwell, Alain Giami, Adam Henschke, Katherine Weatherford Darling, Bertrand Taithe, Peter West-Oram and Sabine Wildevuur. I received detailed, much-appreciated feedback and suggestions from the anonymous reviewers. I would like to thank them for their time and their elaborate comments which were incredibly helpful for revising the manuscript. Moreover, I am very grateful to Andrew Lockett, from University of Westminster Press, and Christian Fuchs, editor of the Critical, Digital and Social Media Studies series, for supporting this book and for enabling its open access publication. Last, though certainly not least, I would like to thank my family, my parents and my brothers, for being as supportive and understanding as ever. I would like to thank my partner, Stefan Meuleman, not only for patiently allowing me the time and space needed to complete this project, but also for his advice on the book and for making sure that I take time away from it too