[ecrea] 2018 DMRC Summer School

https://research.qut.edu.au/dmrc/2018-dmrc-summer-school/

2018 DMRC Summer School

Applications are now open for the 2018 DMRC Summer School
5-9 February 2018, Brisbane, Australia | #dmrcss18

Building on the success of the 2017 DMRC Summer School and the 2015 and 
2016 CCI Digital Methods Summer Schools, we are looking forward to 
welcoming another cohort of participants from all over the world to 
Brisbane next February. This diverse group of PhD students and early 
career researchers will come together to share their knowledge and to 
develop new skills and critical methods for studying for our rapidly 
changing digital media environments and increasingly datafied societies.

While some popular platforms, like Twitter, have been extensively 
studied by social science and humanities researchers and offer 
established methodologies, emerging digital media phenomena are creating 
new ethical, methodological, and conceptual challenges – from 
Instagram’s changing API access to the influence of algorithms, the 
dynamics of cross-platform cultures and private messaging, the black 
boxing of platform governance, and the growing prevalence of visual 
media. The summer school will inspire and challenge participants to seek 
new approaches to sociocultural research, and to engage critically and 
creatively with the practices, platforms, technologies and economies of 
digital media communication.

Program
Digital methods workshops

Below are some of the digital methods workshops that will be offered in 
2018:

Advanced Social Media Analytics – Axel Bruns (QUT)
Particularly when working with large social media datasets, quantitative 
and mixed-methods approaches that draw especially on visual 
representations of ‘big data’ are now an indispensable part of the the 
analytics process. This data analytics and visualisation workshop 
focusses on a number of emerging standard tools and methods for 
large-scale data analytics, using Twitter data to illustrate these 
approaches. It introduces participants to the open-source Twitter 
Capture and Analysis Toolkit (TCAT) as a capable and reliable tool for 
data gathering from the Twitter API, and to the high-end data analytics 
software Tableau as a powerful means of processing and visualising large 
datasets. The skills gained in the workshop are also transferrable to 
working with other large datasets from social media and other sources.

The App Walkthrough – Jean Burgess (QUT)
Software applications (apps) are the site of significant sociocultural 
and economic transformations across many domains, from health and 
relationships to entertainment and finance. As relatively closed 
systems, apps pose methodological challenges for digital media research. 
In this session, we will discuss a new approach, the walkthrough method, 
which combines cultural studies and science and technology studies (STS) 
as a lens for critical app analysis. Participants will learn how to 
establish an app’s environment of expected use by assessing its vision, 
operating model, and modes of governance. They will also gain hands-on 
experience using the walkthrough technique to systematically step 
through the stages of registration, everyday use, and discontinuation to 
identify the app’s embedded cultural meanings and implied ideal users.

Instagrammatics and visual social media – Tim Highfield (QUT)
Visual content is a critical component of everyday social media, on 
platforms explicitly framed around the visual (Instagram, Snapchat), on 
those offering a mix of text and images in myriad forms (Facebook, 
Twitter, Tumblr), and in apps and profiles where visual presentation and 
provision of information are important considerations. Making use of 
shared elements of social media content, such as hashtags, memes, and 
formal and informal conventions of communication, the methods used in 
this workshop position visual social media within the wider social media 
ecosystem. The workshop provides a hands-on means for approaching visual 
social media, giving participants the opportunity to interrogate what 
they might do with such data and what visual media and methods might 
contribute to research. The workshop will also elicit critical 
considerations around working with visual data, dynamic data, archival 
questions (and the challenges of collating such an archive in light of 
Instagram’s Terms of Use), and ethical issues, including privacy.

Encrypt all the things!!! Digital Privacy and Security for Researchers — 
Brenda Moon (QUT) and Felix Münch (QUT)
The political upheavals of 2016 support Edward Snowden’s warnings of a 
turn-key surveillance state. As the aftermath of the military coup in 
Turkey shows, academics can be amongst the first targets of autocratic 
governments. Even in supposedly stable democracies, the passing of 
surveillance laws and indcrease in hacking attacks threatens the 
security of data and communication. In addition, researchers mostly do 
not enjoy the protection of information provided to lawyers, medical 
doctors, and clergy. Recognising these increasing risks, researchers 
need to become more aware of digital methods to protect their research 
and sources. In this hands-on workshop, we address threats a researcher 
should protect against, explain basics of computer security, the 
encryption of data and communication, and provide recommendations for 
existing tools.

Towards Feminist Digital Media Research Methods — Alison Harvey 
(University of Leicester) and Bridget Conor (Kings College London)
Digital and data-driven research methods in media and communication have 
reignited old debates about positionality and positivism as well as 
objectivity, subjectivity, and situated reflexivity. In this workshop, 
we will discuss these questions in light of participants’ research 
projects and interests, and explore the relationship between big and 
small data, ethical obligations and an ethics of care, and the politics 
of (in)visibility in contemporary digital media research. Through this 
conversation we aim to illuminate existing best practices in our 
collective work and to collaboratively develop recommendations for more 
ethical, caring, and critical ways of engaging in digital media research.

Other activities

In addition to the week-long program of hands-on digital methods 
workshops, participants will be able to get feedback and mentoring on 
their own projects, to work on new collaborations, and to engage with 
industry, government and community stakeholders.

As the program and schedule develop, updates will be provided both on 
this page and via email to accepted participants. You might also want to 
follow us on Twitter and Facebook for updates.
Location

The 2018 DMRC Summer School will be held in Brisbane, Australia, at 
Queensland University of Technology’s Creative Industries Precinct, part 
of the Kelvin Grove campus. The Creative Industries Precinct is a 
comfortable walk from the city centre.

Brisbane is the state capital of Queensland, on the Pacific coast of 
Australia. Queensland is home to the world-famous Great Barrier Reef, 
the beaches of the Sunshine and Gold Coasts either side of Brisbane, and 
the rainforests and coastal adventures of far-north Queensland. February 
is summer in Australia, and if you’re based the northern hemisphere, we 
strongly recommend you shake off winter by coming to visit us for the 
summer school and staying to experience all the region has to offer.
Fees and accommodation

The fee for the week-long program is $750 (Australian dollars). The fee 
covers daytime catering and social events.

All participants will be responsible for arranging and paying for their 
own travel and accommodation, as well as for arranging visas if 
required.  There is a range of affordable accommodation options, both on 
and close to the Kelvin Grove campus, which is a short drive or 
comfortable walk from the city centre. Specific information on 
accommodation options will be provided to successful applicants later in 
the process.
How to apply

Applications are now open to currently enrolled PhD candidates and 
recent PhD graduates (no more than 3 years out from PhD). To apply, 
simply complete the Google form by 30 September 2017. If you are unable 
to access the Google form, please contact us at (dmrc /at/ qut.edu.au) and we 
will help you to provide the information in a different way.
Key dates

    Applications open: 22 August 2017
    Applications close: 30 September 2017
    Applicants notified: 6 October 2017
    Registration and payments due: 31 November
    Summer School: 5-9 February 2018

Questions?

Please contact us at (dmrc /at/ qut.edu.au) if you have any questions about the 
Summer School.

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