[ecrea] Digital Methods Winter School 2015 - Univ. of Amsterdam (New Media Monitoring and Data Analytics as Critical Practice)

The focus of this year's Winter School is on how online media monitoring
is currently done by non-governmental (NGOs) such as treealerts.org, and
it seeks to identify practices that could fill in the notion of critical
data analytics.



>New Media Monitoring and Data Analytics as Critical Practice
>
>Digital Methods Winter School, Data Sprint and Mini-Conference
>
>12-16 January 2015 | Digital Methods Winter School
>Digital Methods Initiative | http://www.digitalmethods.net/
>Media Studies | University of Amsterdam
>https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool2015
>
>The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, is pleased to announce
>its
>7th annual Winter School, on New Media Monitoring and Data Analytics as
>Critical Practice. The format is that of a data sprint, with hands-on
>work on
>media monitoring with data analytics, and a Mini-conference, where PhD
>candidates, motivated scholars and advanced graduate students present
>short
>papers on digital methods and new media related topics, and receive
>feedback
>from the Amsterdam group of DMI researchers and international
>participants.
>Participants need not give a paper at the Mini-conference to attend the
>Winter
>School.
>
>The focus of this year's Winter School is on how online media monitoring
>is
>currently done by non-governmental (NGOs) such as treealerts.org, and it
>seeks
>to identify practices that could fill in the notion of critical data
>analytics. For the occasion we have invited academics to present on the
>state
>of the art of online media monitoring by focusing on three areas where
>there
>is both innovation as well as repurposing of techniques normally
>associated
>with marketing, business intelligence and the work of digital agencies:
>issue
>discovery and language placement (who's carrying the conversation),
>engagement
>and public fund-raising (when do images and other engagement formats
>Œwork¹?)
>and crisis communication (who is making the calls when there is a
>breakdown?).
>At the Winter School social media analysts and communications specialists
>from
>NGOs will present on the state of the art of media monitoring, their
>current
>analytical needs and what the Internet can continue to add with respect
>to new
>data sources as well as monitoring techniques. We will also ask each of
>the
>organizations to show us their dashboards.
>
>The first day kicks off with Nathaniel Tkacz from the University of
>Warwick
>who will talk about Dashboards and Data Signals, and the desire to
>control the
>data deluge. After the the first day of talks as well as dashboard show
>and
>tell, the data sprint commences, whereupon the attendees, including
>analysts,
>designers and programmers, undertake empirical projects that address the
>state
>of the art in NGO online media data analysis. We work on projects that
>seek to
>meet the current analytical needs. The week closes with presentations of
>the
>outcomes as well as a festive celebration. During the week there is also
>an
>evening of talks and a debate with Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia,
>at
>the nearby Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science.
>
>The theme of the 2015 Winter School furthers the analytical collaboration
>between the Digital Methods Initiative and NGO media analysts, including
>Soenke Lorenzen of Greenpeace International. Previously workshop
>facilitators
>and collaborators have included representatives from Human Rights Watch,
>Association for Progressive Communications, Women on Waves, Carbon Trade
>Watch, Corporate Observatory Europe and Fair Phone. In preparation for the
>sprint we also have developed how-to worksheets on New Media Monitoring
>and
>Tooling that take as their case studies NGO issue mappings with digital
>methods. Upon conclusion we aim to compile the Sprint projects from the
>Winter
>School, and combine them with the how-to sheets to produce an open access
>publication on NGO media monitoring. All participants are invited to
>contribute.
>Digital Methods Winter School Data Sprint
>
>A data sprint is a workshop format for intensive, empirical project work,
>where analysts, programers, designers and subject matter experts
>collaborate
>to output research. This year's data sprint is devoted to new media
>monitoring
>with data analytics, and particularly its critical practice. Broadly
>speaking,
>media monitoring is understood as the process of reading, watching or
>listening to the editorial content of media sources on a continuing
>basis, and
>then identifying, analyzing and saving materials that contain specific
>themes,
>topics, keywords, names, forms or formats. Monitoring the editorial
>content of
>news sources including newspapers, magazines, trade journals, TV shows,
>radio
>programs and specific websites is by far the most common form of media
>monitoring, but most organizations increasingly monitor social media
>online,
>and its impact on the diffusion of news in all media or in online
>conversation
>(including the comment space) more generally. Most companies, government
>agencies, not-for-profit organizations utilize media monitoring as a tool
>to
>study the "meaning of mentions" of their organization, its campaigns and
>slogans, and gain some sense of the composition of their audiences, and
>what
>animates them (or keeps them quiet).
>
>During the first day of the data sprint academics studying online media
>monitoring will present the state of the art of the field, focusing on
>three
>areas: issue discovery and issue language placement (who is the carrying
>the
>conversation, and which voices are continually elided?), engagement and
>fundraising communication (how are audiences and funders reacting to
>so-called
>'faces of need' and other formats and calls for engagement?) and crisis
>communication (when there is a breakdown, who makes the calls?).
>Representatives from leading NGOs will present to the attendees how they
>practice online media monitoring, the look of their dashboards and the
>analytical needs that drive them. What are these experts able to
>accomplish
>with the techniques available to them, and which questions remain
>unanswered?
>What are the critical media monitoring practices and questions that are
>specific to NGOs? How to conceptualize and operationalize issue discovery,
>engagement for fundraising and crisis monitoring? We will ask the NGO
>communications experts to address these questions. We also will ask them
>what
>they think digital methods and issue mapping may add to the outputs of
>media
>monitoring.
>
>The conversations with the experts will serve as starting points for
>winter
>school attendees - including analysts, designers and programmers - to
>develop
>into empirical projects that aim to answer research questions, and develop
>further techniques for media monitoring online.
>Digital Methods Mini-Conference at the Winter School
>
>The annual Digital Methods Mini-Conference at the Winter School, normally
>a
>one-day affair, provides the opportunity for digital methods and allied
>researchers to present short yet complete papers (5,000-7,500 words) and
>serve
>as respondents, providing feedback. Often the work presented follows from
>previous Digital Methods Summer Schools. The mini-conference accepts
>papers in
>the general digital methods and allied areas: the hyperlink and other
>natively
>digital objects, the website as archived object, web historiographies,
>search
>engine critique, Google as globalizing machine, cross-spherical analysis
>and
>other approaches to comparative media studies, device cultures, national
>web
>studies, Wikipedia as cultural reference, the technicity of (networked)
>content, post-demographics, platform studies, crawling and scraping,
>graphing
>and clouding, and similar.
>Key dates
>
>The deadline for application is 8 December 2014. To apply please send
>along a
>letter of motivation as well as your CV to winterschool [at]
>digitalmethods.net, with DMI Winter School in the subject header.
>Notifications will be sent on 9 December. If you are participating in the
>Mini-conference the deadline for submission of paper titles, abstracts and
>bios is also 8 December, with DMI Mini-conference & Winter School in the
>subject header. Please send your materials to winterschool [at]
>digitalmethods.net
>. To attend the Winter School, you need not participate in the Mini-
>conference. Deadline for submission of complete papers (5,000-7,500 words)
> is 6 January 2015. The program and schedule are available on 7 January.
>Fees & Logistics
>
>The fee for the Digital Methods Winter School 2015 is EUR 295. Bank
>transfer
>information will be sent along with the notification on 9 December 2014.
>The
>Winter School is self-catered. The venue is in the center of Amsterdam
>with
>abundant coffee houses and lunch places. Participants are expected to find
>their own housing (airbnb and other short-stay sites are helpful). During
>the
>week there is an evening at the Royal Academy with Jimmy Wales of
>Wikipedia.
>The Winter School closes on Friday with a festive event, after the final
>presentations. Here is a guide to the Amsterdam new media scene. For
>further
>questions, please contact the organizers, Liliana Bounegru, Natalia
>Sanchez
>and Saskia Kok, at (winterschool /at/ digitalmethods.net).
>About DMI
>
>The Digital Methods Winter School is part of the Digital Methods
>Initiative,
>Amsterdam, dedicated to reworking method for Internet-related research.
>The
>Digital Methods Initiative holds the annual Digital Methods Summer Schools
>(eight to date), which are intensive and full time 2-week undertakings in
>the
>Summertime. The 2015 Summer School will take place 29 June - 10 July
>2015. The
>coordinators of the Digital Methods Initiative are Sabine Niederer and
>Esther
>Weltevrede (PhD candidates in New Media & Digital Culture, University of
>Amsterdam), and the director is Richard Rogers, Professor of New Media &
>Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam. Liliana Bounegru is the managing
>director. Digital methods are online at http://www.digitalmethods.net/.
>The
>DMI about page includes a substantive introduction, and also a list of
>Digital
>Methods people, with bios. DMI holds occasional Autumn and Spring
>workshops,
>such as recent ones on mapping climate change and vulnerability indexes as
>well as on studying right-wing extremism and populism online. There is
>also a
>Digital Methods book (MIT Press, 2013), papers and articles by DMI
>researchers
>as well as Digital Methods tools.




---------------
ECREA-Mailing list
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier and ECREA.
--
To subscribe, post or unsubscribe, please visit
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://homepages.vub.ac.be/~ncarpent/
--
ECREA - European Communication Research and Education Association
Chauss�de Waterloo 1151, 1180 Uccle, Belgium
Email: (info /at/ ecrea.eu)
URL: http://www.ecrea.eu
---------------