2 weeks ago, I defended my habilitation “Algorithmic Imaginaries. Visions & values in the shaping of search engines” at the Department of Science & Technology Studies, University of Vienna. I truly thank Uli Felt, Max Fochler & the whole habilitation commettee for their support throughout the rather lengthy process. I especially thank Karen Kastenhofer for sharing the ride with me! It was a blast! 🙂
Here’s the ITA news, and the so-called “Rahmenschrift“. Enjoy!!!
Tomorrow the huge 4S/EASST conference starts, albeit virtually. It’s the first ZOOM conference I’m attending at this scale and I’m really curious how that will work out! 😉 I’m involved in three sessions:
If you’re registered for the conference you can find the links to the ZOOM meetings right next to the sessions.
This is the abstract for my introductory course into Science and Technology Studies using digital technology as an exemplary case (data, algorithms & prognosis more specifically). I’m already looking forward to heated discussions on social media, AI, self-driving cars, recommender systems and their sociopolitical dimensions and governance implications! (@ the Deptartment of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna; in German).
Suchmaschinen, soziale Netzwerke und eine Vielzahl von Apps am Handy sind aus unserem Alltag nicht mehr wegzudenken. Sie haben sich in unsere alltäglichen Praktiken eingenistet, gestalten aber gleichzeitig auch welche Informationen wir finden, wie wir über Distanz kommunizieren, und wie wir unseren Körper wahrnehmen, wenn wir zum Beispiel an Gesundheitsapps denken. Sie werfen aber auch eine Reihe gesellschaftspolitischer Fragen auf: Was bekommen wir in Suchmaschinen-Ergebnissen, Newsfeeds und Online-Recommendations zu sehen und was nicht? Welche neuen Formen von Bias und Diskriminierung entstehen dabei? Wie können auf Basis gesammelter Daten Zukunftsprognosen erstellt werden und welche Konsequenzen gehen damit einher? Was bedeutet die zunehmende Quantifizierung unterschiedlicher Lebensbereiche für Individuen und Gesellschaft? Wie können wir global agierende Technologie-Unternehmen und deren Geschäftsmodelle (Stichwort ‘Datenhandel’) regulieren und welche gesellschaftliche Teilhabe ist dabei möglich?
Diese Fragen möchten wir in unserem Kurs anhand von klassischen Einführungstexten aus der Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung (STS), sowie aktuellen Texten aus den kritischen New Media Studies behandeln. In jeder Einheit wird die Lehrveranstaltungsleiterin zunächst ein klassisches STS-Konzept – soziale Konstruktion von Technologie, Politik von Technologie, Actor-Network Theory, Technikentwicklung und Geschlecht, Partizipation etc – vorstellen und zur Diskussion aufbereiten (Pflichttext). Darauf aufbauend werden wir einen Text aus den Themenfeldern Daten, Algorithmen und Prognosen diskutieren, der das jeweilige Konzept zur Anwendung bringt (Referatstext). Dieser wird von Studierenden in der Gruppe aufbereitet und zur Diskussion gestellt/ moderiert. Zusätzlich dazu werden zwei schriftliche Arbeitsaufgaben gestellt, die wir im Seminar diskutieren werden. Voraussetzungen für den Zeugniserwerb sind Anwesenheit, Mitarbeit, mündliche Präsentation (Textdiskussion oder Position in der Bürgerkonferenz), schriftliche Arbeitsaufgaben, sowie die Absolvierung der schriftlichen Abschlussprüfung. Da der Kurs größtenteils auf englischsprachigen Texten basiert sind grundlegende Englischkenntnisse erforderlich. Die Unterrichtssprache ist deutsch.
More information can be found at the University of Vienna website.
Tomorrow I’ll be going to the conference by the European Sociological Association in Athens. The conference theme is (Un)Making Europe. Capitalism, Solidarities, Subjectivities. I’ll be giving a talk on the co-production of search technology and a European identity in the session “information technologies & society” organized by Harald Rohracher. It’s related to my article “search engine imaginary” that got published in Social Studies of Science just recently. It’s pretty unusual for me to give a talk about finished work, but I thought I had to submit something since this research corresponds to the overall conference topic so well. 😉
Here’s the conference abstract and the link to the full paper:
(Un)Making Europe in the Context of Search Engine Policy
This article discusses the co-production of search technology and a European identity in the context of the EU data protection reform. The negotiations of the EU data protection legislation ran from 2012 until 2015 and resulted in a unified data protection legislation directly binding for all European member states. I employ a discourse analysis to examine EU policy documents and Austrian media materials related to the reform process. Using the concept ‘sociotechnical imaginary’, I show how a European imaginary of search engines is forming in the EU policy domain, how a European identity is constructed in the envisioned politics of control, and how national specificities contribute to the making and unmaking of a European identity. I discuss the roles that national technopolitical identities play in shaping both search technology and Europe, taking as an example Austria, a small country with a long history in data protection and a tradition of restrained technology politics.
My new research project “Algorithmic Imaginaries. Visions & values in the shaping of search engines” is online (on the ITA Website)! 🙂 Thanks to Thomas Bayer for his help!
Further, the short videos on “Algorithmic Regimes” by Felix Stalder & Konrad Becker (World-Information Institute) are online too! The project is called Painted by Numbers, which is a great name I think! All videos are focusing on algorithmic logics and culture/ politics/ regulation etc. It’s really a great compilation of people and statements on algorithmic power in contemporary society. The videos will be assembled as video installations in art exhibitions. You can watch all of them here.
The first empirical article of my project “Glocal Search” is online now: “Search engine imaginary. Visions and values in the co-production of search technology and Europe”! It has been published by the peer-reviewed journal Social Studies of Science, which makes me very proud! I’d like to thank all people who helped me refining my article – especially my ITA colleagues, Max Fochler, SSS editor Sergio Sismondo and three anonymous reviewers who all provided thorough and constructive feed-back and suggestions! I further like to thank my family for letting me work while being on maternity leave!! I’m very confident with the final outcome!
The online first version (plus abstract) can be found here; just drop me a line if you don’t have access – I’ll (very secretly) send you a copy then.. 😉 I would love to hear what you think about it since the whole field of Internet Governance is one that I just recently entered – the great AOIR workshop “The Internet Rules, But How?”, organized by Dmitry Epstein, Christian Katzenbach, Francesca Musiani & Julia Pohle, was a very good entry point by the way! Also, the related special issue by the journal Internet Policy Review on “Doing internet governance: practices, controversies, infrastructures, and institutions” is a good read. It’s open access and free of charge!
My course “Technologie & Gesellschaft.’Opening the Black Box of Technology’ am Beispiel von Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien” will start soon! – at the Department of Science & Technology Studies, University of Vienna (in German). You can register here.
That’s the abstract:
Das Verhältnis von Technologie und Gesellschaft ist komplex und vielschichtig. Technologien wie Smartphones, Suchmaschinen, soziale Netzwerke oder Ãœberwachungskameras werden als Innovationen gesehen, die unsere Gesellschaft zunehmend prägen und verändern. Technologie wird dabei oftmals als ‘Black Box’ wahrgenommen, die von außen auf unsere Gesellschaft trifft. Dieser Kurs möchte die schwarze Box öffnen und zeigen, dass Technologie in unserer Gesellschaft verhandelt wird und daher gesellschaftliche Normen, Werte und Ideologien in sich trägt. Als Handwerkszeug dienen uns dabei Konzepte aus der Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung. Diese werden uns helfen Technologie als Politik mit anderen Mitteln zu verstehen, die soziale Konstruktion von Technologie unter die Lupe zu nehmen, die Verschmelzung von technischen und sozialen Elementen zu analysieren, die Beziehung von Technik und Geschlecht zu begreifen, sowie unterschiedliche Orte der Technikgestaltung/Kontroversen in Medien- und Onlinedebatten, Steuerung und Regulierung, sowie Bürgerkonferenzen kennenzulernen.
Das Seminar bietet eine Einführung in Konzepte der Wissenschafts- und Technikforschung, die sich mit dem Verhältnis von Technologie und Gesellschaft befassen. Die Lehrveranstaltungsleiterin wird zentrale Konzepte vorstellen, welche wir dann anhand von konkreten Beispielen aus dem Feld der Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologie diskutieren werden. Klassische Text-Diskussionen (zu Themen wie Gesichtserkennung, Suchmaschinen, Social Media, Online-Kontroversen, Internet Governance etc) werden sich dabei mit experimentellen Arbeitsaufgaben (Selbstbeobachtung zu Technik im Alltag, Bürgerkonferenz zu Internet of Things) abwechseln. Voraussetzungen für den Zeugniserwerb sind Anwesenheit, Mitarbeit, mündliche Präsentation, schriftliche Arbeitsaufgaben, sowie die Absolvierung der schriftlichen Abschlussprüfung. Da der Kurs größtenteils auf englischen Texten basiert sind grundlegende Englischkenntnisse erforderlich. Die Unterrichtssprache ist deutsch.
I’m so (so so so) happy that my project “Algorithmic imaginaries. Visions and values in the shaping of search engines” will finally come true! After a really long application process the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) decided to fund this awesome habilitation project! You’ll find the abstract below; more information will follow once the project has started (November 2016 since I’m still on maternity leave). For all of you who have projects under review (or rejected already): don’t give up! It’s a nerv-wrecking process, but if you finally manage to succeed, it’s all worth it!!! (Of course, in times like these peer review has become some sort of strage academic lottery, which does not make the practice any better..)
Algorithmic imaginaries.
Visions and values in the shaping of search engines
Search engines like Google are developed in the US-American context, but are used around the globe. Their business models are based on user-targeted advertising. They collect user data, turn it into user profiles, and sell them to advertising clients. Since the NSA affair practices of user profiling are critically discussed; especially in European contexts with diverse data protection laws, historically shaped notions of privacy, and very different tax systems. The ongoing reform of the EU data protection legislation is an important arena where tensions between global search engines and European policy visions and values can be observed. Besides, European search engines emerge that aim to provide users with alternative styles of search. Some are explicitly developed as a European competitor to US-based search engines (Quaero or Independent Web Index). Others are developed in Europe, but draw on other value-systems to distinguish themselves from big search engines, such as respecting users’ privacy (e.g. Ixquick), protecting the environment (e.g. Ecosia), or creating a non-commercial search engine owned by the public (e.g. YaCy).
This poses important questions: What motivations, value-systems, and visions guide the development of European search engines? How are these imaginations translated into sociotechnical design practices? What power struggles, negotiations, and compromises may be observed? How do place and cultural context matter in the design process? Researchers in Science and Technology Studies (STS) investigated the politics of search engines, the relevance of algorithms, and internet governance. What is missing is an in-depth analysis of the shaping of search engines in specific cultural contexts and the role shared value systems and visions play in it. Rooted in the discipline of STS the suggested habilitation project will fill in this gap by investigating design practices of European search projects using a case-study approach (qualitative interviews, workshops, ethnographic observations).
Results from this analysis will be compared to and cross-analyzed with results from my past research on capitalist ideologies driving global search engines like Google and my present research on visions and values guiding European search engine governance. This overall analysis will result in a typology of algorithmic imaginaries, which describes visions and values in the development and governance of search engines in global, European, and local contexts. It will show how search technologies and society co-emerge in specific economic, political, and cultural settings. The primary focus on European contexts is a particular strength of the project since tensions between global search engines and European governance structures and search projects are growing, but have not been systematically studied yet, both in the field of STS and internet research.
I’m already looking forward to the AoIR (Association of Internet Researchers) conference in Berlin (6-8 October 2016). The overall theme of the conference is “Internet Rules!”. I’ll be part of the pre-conference workshop “The Internet Rules, But How? A Science and Technology Studies Take on Doing Internet Governance”; here‘s the program with its exciting line-up!! After one year of maternity leave this workshop will get me back on track.. hehe.
This week I spent two sunny days in Graz to attend the STS conference “Critical Issues in Science and Technology Studies”. Doris Allhutter and I organized a panel on the “politics of ICTs”, which turned out to be really interesting! Great presentations, great topics, great participants. Also, we discovered quite a number of overlapping issues and shared interests, which is not always the case with regard to conference panels. I particularly liked the presentations on the material/ technological dimension of ideology and gender relations, sociotechnical/ digital work practices and cultural specificities, and questions on power relations in design practices of ICTs. Anne Dippel struggling with computer problems while talking about bugs in the CERN software and how they affect physicists’ work practices was just one highlight of our panel 😉 I still hope Doris and I will manage to put together a special issue on the fascinating co-emergence of social and digital cultures.
The second highlight of the week was the arrival of the Society of the Query Reader (eds René König & Miriam Rasch; Institute of Network Cultures (INC) reader #9). It’s great to see my contribution on big search and its alternatives in such a nicely designed book. Didn’t the conference designers even get an award for the beautiful flyers, badges and stuff? Anyway, the reader is a wonderful compilation of essays on corporate search engines and alternative styles of search. If interested, you can order or download the book for free (!) more information here..