Bookcast: Melissa Villa-Nicholas discussing her book Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Building an Industry around Immigrants

Featuring authors: Dr. Melissa Villa-Nicholas

Book: Data Borders: How Silicon Valley is Building an Industry around Immigrants (2023) University of California Press.

 

Bookcast: Luke Munn interviewed by Andrew Dougall

In this bookcast, Andrew Dougall interviews Luke Munn, Research Fellow in Digital Cultures & Societies at the University of Queensland about his recent book 'Technical Territories: Data, Subjects, and Spaces in Infrastructural Asia' (2023). 

Book Launch, Digital Sociology: The Reinvention of Social Research by Noortje Marres

Madras HQ Bibliotheque, CODE/CITY, Manu Luksch © 2017

Digital Sociology* was launched on 9 May 2017 at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. The launch included a panel discussion chaired by Lucy Kimble (University of the Arts London) with contributions from the author, Noortje Marres (University of Warwick; BD&S Editorial Board member) and four panellists.  In advance of the panel, the Journal also filmed Hannah Knox (UCL; BD&S Editorial Board member) interviewing Marres about some key arguments in her book.  The video is available here.

Noortje Marres began by noting that her final manuscript was submitted shortly after the Brexit vote and Trump election, which have sparked considerable debate on the role of social media, data analysis tools to detect fake news and new forms of blocking manipulative content. What is the relation of these two events to her book? She argued that these are piecemeal technical solutions that do not go to the heart of the problem. As much research has shown, communities amongst which fake news circulates are separate from the platforms and their mitigating technical services. What technical solutions do not address is that sharing is a logic underpinning digital platforms and from which their social value is derived. It is this value and logic that digital sociology attends to, of how knowledge generation is a social process rather than narrowly behaviorist or configured by individual platforms. Marres’ understanding of social logics is at the heart of her book and each panelist took this up in different ways.

Les Back (Goldsmiths) began with a quote from Marres’ book, that ‘digital sociology is ultimately a form of awareness, nothing more, nothing less’ (44) and that it is not fringe but key to understanding social life and that we are already inside the thing we are trying to understand. To exemplify this point he noted how the monitoring of social media is part of the very techniques of digital border surveillance and the traceability of migrants.  Beyond police and border guards, the movement and management of migrants are in numerous and troubling ways implicated in the digital.

Amanda Windle (University of the Arts London) offered a feminist critique by referencing a quote inspired by Donna Haraway’s work that ‘we must stay with the trouble’ (37). Marres offered this in relation to the troubling question of framings of the digital as either an object or instrument of inquiry. Windle added to the ‘troubles’ raised in Marres’ book by posing a number of questions such as ‘whose digital sociology?’; are research subjects active or passive participants? what are the situated practices that make up digital life? which bodies are potentially silenced?

Mike Savage (LSE) reflected on the reference in Marres’ book to the 2007 article he co-wrote with Roger Burrows on the ‘coming crisis of empirical sociology’ and how Marres effectively critiques the presumed binary they set up between ‘new’ and ‘old’ methods. Taking the example of inequalities research, he argued that rather than debating for or against new methods the challenge is how to persuasively tell stories through aesthetic devices and visualisations and what he names the ‘symphonic aesthetic.’ 

Hannah Knox (UCL) took up another claim in Marres’s book that while people have always been active in world making, digital devices blur the boundaries between methods and the tools people use in their everyday lives. She argued that scientists need to become sociologists to understand data and interpret visualisations. Through this provocation she made an appeal for interdisciplinarity and questioned whether we are all becoming digital sociologists or if there are new forms of expertise emerging in the interstices of existing disciplines.

In these and other ways, all presentations attested to the importance and wide applicability of Marres' book for sociological studies of digital worlds.  An audio transcript of the panel can be found here.

*Marres, Noortje.  2017. Digital Sociology: The Reinvention of Social Research. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Bookcast: Deborah Lupton interviewed by Noortje Marres

In this bookcast, Noortje Marres, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, interviews Deborah Lupton, Centenary Research Professor in the News & Media Research Centre, Faculty of Arts & Design at the University of Canberra about her recent book 'Digital Sociology' (2015). Noortje and Deborah are both members of the BD&S Editorial Board.

Bookcast: Tobias Blanke interviewed by Jennifer Pybus

In this bookcast, Jennifer Pybus, Associate Professor at the University of the Arts London, interviews Tobias Blanke, Senior Lecturer at the Centre for e-Research at King's College London and member of the Big Data & Society Editorial Board, about his recent book "Digital Asset Ecosystems: Rethinking crowds and cloud".

Bookcast: Rob Kitchin interviewed by Matthew Fuller & Ramon Amaro

In his latest book, The Data Revolution (2014), Prof Rob Kitchin provides a much needed critical overview of the questions and concerns that are emerging as a consequence of Big Data. In the bookcast below, Rob comments on some of the themes of the book.

Earlier this year, Rob also published an article with Big Data & Society. The full version of "Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts" is available here.

Bookcast: Dhiraj Murthy interviewed by Anatoliy Gruzd on ‘Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age’

Here is a bookcast of Dhiraj Murthy from Goldsmiths, University of London, discussing his recent book ‘Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age’ with our co-editor Anatoliy Gruzd:

Bookcast: BD&S Co-editor Richard Rogers interviewed by Noortje Marres on his book, Digital Methods

Our co-editor Richard Rogers was recently awarded the 2014 Outstanding Book Award by the International Communication Association (ICA) for his book 'Digital Methods' (2013). More details about the book can be found here: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-methods

In this bookcast Richard discusses his book with sociologist Noortje Marres of Goldsmiths, University of London: