[ecrea] Call for Participation - Digital Methods Summer School 2015

Call for Participation: Digital Methods Summer School 2015
Post-Snowden Media Empiricism and Secondary Social Media: Data Studies 
Beyond Facebook and Twitter
Digital Methods Summer School - 29 June - 10 July 2015

The Summer School is pleased to have Lev Manovich give the opening 
keynote on Monday, 29 June.

This year's Digital Methods Summer School is devoted to what we call 
‘post-Snowden media empiricism’ and 'secondary social media’. 
Post-Snowden media empiricism refers to how to study online media since 
the revelations in June 2013 about the breadth and scope of NSA 
surveillance activities. Writing about the future of media theory, 
post-Snowden, scholars are closing the age of Internet innocence. For 
years one would study the extent to which cyberspace is an alternative 
space, a realm of new politics, corporealities and identity play, 
cleared of reputation, institutions and regulatory legal regimes. Such a 
point of departure is long dated, but the post-Snowden dates others too. 
The likely exception is surveillance studies, once a branch or 
sub-field. Such is the context these days for calls for 'post-media' as 
well as 'post-digital' studies.

In considering how to rethink the study of online media, post-Snowden, 
there is a series of proposals for new theory, but there is not the 
concomitant attention to the empirical project. What may be the agenda 
for a post-Snowden media empiricism? Are there digital methods for a 
post-Snowden surveillance studies? Considering how to approach online 
media generally nowadays, we ask:

	1	What does it mean for media researchers to treat and study 
empirically the web as an intelligence medium? Do we hunt for 
confidential documents and study 		leaks? Would we inevitably slope 
towards intelligence work?
	2	In post-Snowden media empiricism, would one embrace the study of the 
dark web, 'anonymous', onion routers and such? Should we throw a Tor 
install party?
	3	Ghostery and other software that tracks trackers (like our very own “ 
tracker tracker” tool) are means to study soft surveillance online 
(third party cookies, 			beacons, etc.). Does such surveillance study 
pale in the face of the sheer scale of post-Snowden media?
	4	With the cloud we have moved from a user logic of downloading to one 
of uploading. Should we replace our scrapers with sniffers?
	5	Do the older new media methods still apply? Could we map the cloud as 
linked server space?

The NSA did not name all the social media platforms. 'Secondary social 
media' is a term we are using to compliment and place opposite to GAFA 
(Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), employed increasingly in French 
intellectual circles to denote U.S. digital cultural imperialism. What 
value do the other social media platforms have for social research? If 
Google can be shown to author new source epistemologies, Apple's iOS 
store (together with Amazon's lists) as sources for best-selling issues 
and Facebook for most engaged with content, what do secondary social 
media such as Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr have to offer? We are also 
interested in social media alternatives and new online spaces offering 
conviviality without necessarily resorting to the logic of the social graph.

Big Platforms, or GAFA
Among the big data critiques is the notion of ready-made data. This line 
of thought is part of the continuum which sees a wholesale switch from 
hermeneutics to pattern-recognition as well as a reputational swing 
favouring those with big analytical infrastructure. But there needs to 
be data for the machines that learn and the analysts who run them. 
Ready-made data as a big data critique refers to an over reliance on API 
streams for the study of virtually any societal matter, such as Twitter 
data to monitor disasters, revolutions and presidential transitions and 
predict flu trends, elections as well as celebrity awards.
Which data are preferred? Whilst the term has deeper roots in the 
consideration of publishing old media online, the acronym, GAFA, 
standing for Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, has resonated particularly 
in the French press and scientific literature as the new term for U.S. 
digital cultural imperialism, expanded from allusions to Googlization 
nearly a decade ago, which also coincided with a call for a European 
search engine, Quaero. Whilst the term may fit well for media publishers 
and advertisers, for data analysts Twitter is an obvious addition for 
the study of influence and trend as would be Wikipedia, not only for 
monitoring attention to matters of concern and cross-cultural comparison 
but also for data groundwork such as keyword and source list-building 
(with the advantage or disadvantage of often being exhaustive such as 
the list of social networking websites).

As a counter-point to GAFA, and the study of big platforms, we would 
like to introduce the notion of secondary social media, with the 
question, where are the other signals (online) for the potential 
purposes of social research? And do they tend to be studied in a similar 
fashion as the big platforms (monitoring and prediction)? How else to 
study them?

When one queries new trending social media networks, most popular social 
media sites for teens or other auto-suggested and completed key phrases 
in leading search engines, the lists may be concatenated (the exhaustive 
approach) or triangulated, serving up LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, 
Tumblr, Flickr, Vine, Meetup, and other platforms but also the ‘after 
Facebook’ messaging applications such as Snapchat. How to study the 
other social media?

The first recognition is that secondary social media is meant as a term 
in a research sense rather than one pursued from a political economy 
point of view. We realise that Vine is owned by Twitter, Flickr by 
Yahoo, Instagram by Facebook, meaning that they are already GAFA-like, 
and rising on (potential) market capitalization lists. They are 
understudied, however, both generally but also in terms of how they may 
be repurposed for social research, which is the digital methods approach.
Secondary social media have specificities as well as similiarities to 
Twitter and Facebook, which may makes methods of their study comparable. 
Instagram selfies (including their locations and characteristics) have 
seen scholarly attention as has (gendered) social curation on Pinterest. 
But one may make use of the content tagging and activity on the 
platformed social media so as to study issue engagement. Instagram has 
hashtags (and comments), and Pinterest likes, repins and comments, 
organising content and metrified attention to it in ways similar to 
Twitter and Facebook, where one routinely studies most engaged with 
content (through the likes, shares, comments, liked comments on Facebook 
pages and groups, and retweets and favorites on Twitter), often finding 
content with characteristics consistent with memes. With its reblogging 
feature, Tumblr is similar, as potentially are its modes of analysis.

Indeed, there may be a temptation to reduce all social media analysis 
with digital methods to the study of network metrics, particuarly 
through inquiries into influence, be it of an individual (clout) or a 
subject matter (trend). The ease with which data can be collected from 
such platform APIs as Twitter, and poured into analytics buckets attests 
to the admonition. As an analytical strategy, however, one also may 
prefer the specificities of the platform over the typical metrics 
measures. On the list are mature platforms such as Flickr, where one 
typically studies tagging’s new taxonomies, or more specifically the 
social life tags, watching which pictures most significantly occupy the 
politics tag over time, for example. There is LinkedIn, which one can 
study the (new) skill sets of professions, profiling the new job names 
and activities in the emerging creative industries. Snapchat to date has 
had little scholarship or attention paid to its analytics, apart from a 
security breach into its unauthorised API, thus far defying repurposing. 
When is a platform less suitable or even useless for repurposing for 
social research? Such could also fill in the notion of secondary social 
media.

About "Digital Methods" as Concept
Digital methods is a term coined as a counter-point to virtual methods, 
which typically digitize existing methods and port them onto the Web. 
Digital methods, contrariwise, seek to learn from the methods built into 
the dominant devices online, and repurpose them for social and cultural 
research. That is, the challenge is to study both the info-web as well 
as the social web with the tools that organize them. There is a general 
protocol to digital methods. At the outset stock is taken of the 
natively digital objects that are available (links, tags, threads, etc.) 
and how devices such as search engines make use of them. Can the device 
techniques be repurposed, for example by remixing the digital objects 
they take as inputs? Once findings are made with online data, where to 
ground them? Is the baseline still the offline, or are findings to be 
grounded in more online data? There is also a Digital Methods book (MIT 
Press, 2013) as well as a complementary Issue Mapping book (Amsterdam 
University Press, 2015).

About the Summer School
The Digital Methods Summer School, founded in 2007 together with the 
Digital Methods Initiative, is directed by Professor Richard Rogers, 
Chair in New Media & Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. The 
Summer School is one training opportunity provided by the Digital 
Methods Initiative (DMI). DMI also has a Winter School, which includes a 
mini-conference, where papers are presented and responded to. Winter 
School papers are often the result of Summer School projects. The Summer 
School is coordinated by two PhD candidates in New Media at the 
University of Amsterdam, or affiliates. This year the coordinators are 
to be announced. The Summer School has a technical staff as well as a 
design staff, drawn from the ranks of Density Design in Milan. The 
Summer School also relies on a technical infrastructure of some nine 
servers hosting tools and storing data. In a culture of experimentation 
and skill-sharing, participants bring their laptops, learn method, 
undertake research projects, make reports, tools and graphics and write 
them up on the Digital Methods wiki. The Summer School concludes with 
final presentations. Often there are guests from non-governmental or 
other organizations who present their issues. For instance, Women on 
Waves came along during the 2010, Fair Phone to the 2012 Summer School 
and Greenpeace and their Gezi Park project in 2013. We worked on the 
issue of rewilding with NGOs in the 2014 Summer School. Digital Methods 
people are currently interning at major NGOs and international 
organizations. Previous Digital Methods Summer Schools, 2007-2014, 
https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/DmiSummerSchool. See also previous 
Digital Methods Winter Schools, 2009-2015, 
https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool.

The Digital Methods Initiative was founded with a grant from the 
Mondriaan Foundation, and the Summer School has been supported by the 
Center for Creation, Content and Technology (CCCT), University of 
Amsterdam, organized by the Faculty of Science with sponsorship from 
Platform Beta. It also receives support from the Citizen Data Lab, 
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. The Digital Methods Summer 
School is self-sustaining.

Applications and fees
To apply for the Digital Methods Summer School 2015, please use the 
University of Amsterdam Summer School form. Or, please send a one-page 
letter explaining how digital methods training would benefit your 
current work, and also enclose a CV, a copy of your passport (details 
page only), a headshot photo as well as a 100-word bio. Mark your 
application "DMI Training Certificate Program," and send to info [at] 
digitalmethods.net. Please also mention in your application e-mail 
whether you'd like to make use of the accommodation service (for more 
information see below "Housing and Accomodation”). The deadline for 
applications for the Summer School is 23 April 2015. Notices will be 
sent on 24 April. Please address your application email to the Summer 
School coordinators, Saskia Kok and Liliana Bounegru, info [at] 
digitalmethods.net. Informal queries may be sent to the email address as 
well. The Summer School costs EUR 595 (non-credits) or EUR 895 with 
credits (6 ECTS). Accepted applicants will be informed of the bank 
transfer details upon notice of acceptance to the Summer School on 24 
April 2015. The fee must be paid by 24 May 2015.

Scholarships
The Digital Methods Summer School is part of the University of Amsterdam 
Summer School programme, which has a video giving a flavor of the Summer 
School experience. Students from universities in the LERU and U21 
networks are eligible for a scholarship to help cover the cost for 
tuition and housing for the DMI Summer School. Please consult their 
websites in order to see whether you are eligible for a scholarship and 
to begin the application procedure.

Housing and Accommodations
The Summer School is self-catered, and there are abundant cafes and a 
university mensa nearby. The Digital Methods Summer School is located in 
the heart of Amsterdam. There are limited accommodations available to 
participants at The Student Hotel at reasonable rates. In your 
application please indicate whether you are interested in making use of 
this service. In your acceptance notification, you will be given 
information about the reservation as well as payment. For those who 
prefer other accommodations, we suggest airbnb or similar. For shorter 
stay, there is Hotel Le Coin, where you may request a university discount.

Summer School Credits (6 ECTS)
For those following the Digital Methods Summer School for credit, 6 
credits (ECTS) are granted to participants who follow the Summer School 
program, and complete a significant contribution to a Summer School 
project (evidenced by co-authorship of the project report as well as 
final (joint) presentation). Templates for the project report as well as 
for the presentation slides are supplied. For previous Summer School 
projects, see for example 
https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WikipediaAsASpaceOfControversy.

Schedule
The Summer School meets every weekday. Please bring your laptop. We will 
provide abundant connectivity. We start generally at 9:30 in the 
morning, and end around 5:30. There are morning talks one to two days 
per week. On the last Friday we have a boat trip on the canals of Amsterdam.

For your Summer School to be especially successful we would recommend 
highly that you watch (or listen to) the Digital Methods tutorials. 
Please see: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/SummerSchool2015

Social Media & User-Generated Content
Twitter hashtag #dmi15
We shall have a list of summer school participants and make an 
old-fashioned Facebook with the headshots and bio's you send to us.

We look forward to welcoming you to Amsterdam in the Summertime!



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