Carolin Gerlitz
University of Siegen, Media Studies, Faculty Member
- App Studies, Digital methods, Inventive methods, Issue Mapping, Digital Sociology, Infrastructure studies, and 11 moreSocial Media, Digital Social Research, Software Studies, Numbers, Economic Sociology, Value theory (Philosophy), Brand Management, Digital Culture, Topology, Measurement and Evaluation, and Affect (Cultural Theory)edit
- I am Professor of Digital Media and Methods at the University of Siegen, Co-Director of the Graduate School Locating ... moreI am Professor of Digital Media and Methods at the University of Siegen, Co-Director of the Graduate School Locating Media and Deputy Speaker of the Institute for Media Studies, Siegen. I hold a PhD and MA from Goldsmiths, University of London and a BA/MA from the University of Arts Berlin and am member of the Digital Methods Initiative Amsterdam since 2009.My work explores the various intersections between new media, methods and economic sociology, with a specific interest in web economies, platform and software studies, digital methods, brands, value, topology, measurement, numeracy, social media, digital sociology, inventive methodologies and issue mapping online. I am interested in advancing new methodologies to study digital and platform cultures drawing on digital research methods and its intersection to other methodological approaches. Among my key questions is how value is generated from digital data and how quantification and numbers participate in life in digital media.From April 2017 I am co-speaker (together with Tristan Thielmann) of the DFG funded Graduate School 'Locating Media' which explores media research in motion and in situ. The graduate school seeks to explore inventive methods for interdisciplinary media research, bringing together mobile, ethnographic and digital methodologies.I hold a 4 year NWO Veni grant for the project ‘Numbering Life. Measures and Metrics in Digital Media’ (2015-2019). The project investigates the socio-technical conditions and implications of quantification in social media platforms. It asks how phenomena such as Like or friend counts, popularity rankings or algorithmic metrics participate in what they attempt to measure and allow third-parties to make social media activities economically valuable.Together with colleague Tristan Thielmann, I am principal investigator of the project ‘Navigation in Online/Offline Spaces’ which is part of the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) Media of Cooperation at the University of Siegen (2016-2019). The sub-project investigates social forms of navigation in the field of US routemaps, drones and social navigation apps to explore their media practices and technicity and the specific forms of navigations they enable. Together with Fernando van der Vlist, I focus on advancing new digital methods for analysing apps which can study the operation of software in mobile and situative ways. Furthermore, the project seeks to advance the field of platform studies, by exploring how drones and apps engage in and expand current understandings of platforms. I am part of the international App Studies Initiative.In addition, I am member of the interdisciplinary research initiative Popular Cultures at the University of Siegen which explores the nexus of pop and popularity. In this context I have been exploring interdisciplinary perspectives on lists, asking how lists create order, relations and values together with my colleagues Markus Helmerich, Johannes Paßmann and Matthias Schaffrick.Since 2009, I have been a member of the Digital Methods Initiative Amsterdam and have been involved in a multiplicity of projects, many of them still ongoing. Among these projects is the exploration of third party tracking ecologies, leading to a new tool to identify trackers and the Tracker Guide to the Cloud which was exhibited at MOTI, but also experimental projects on studying app ecologies as well as Twitter data. Furthermore, I am part of the Public Data Lab, an international consortium for inventive data-intensive research.edit
Being popular means getting noticed by many. Popularity is measured as well as staged. Rankings and charts provide information on what is popular while vying for popularity themselves. They do not speak to the quality or originality of... more
Being popular means getting noticed by many. Popularity is measured as well as staged. Rankings and charts provide information on what is popular while vying for popularity themselves. They do not speak to the quality or originality of the popular, only to its evident success across different scales of evaluation. People do not buy good products, they buy popular ones; they do not listen to the best music, but to popular music; they do not share, like or retweet important, but popular news. Even the ‘unpopular’ can be popular: a despised politician, a hated jingle, an unpopular measure. The popular modifies whatever it affords with attention. Its quantitatively and hierarchically comparative terms (‘bestseller’, ‘outperformer’, ‘high score’, ‘viral’) generate valences that do not inhere in the objects themselves. Conversely, the non-popular, which does not find any measurable resonance in these terms, risks being dismissed as irrelevant or worthless simply because it does not appear...
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The collaborative research centre "Media of Cooperation" focuses on the genesis and distribution of digital and data-intensive media and approaches them as cooperatively accomplished means of cooperation. During the initial... more
The collaborative research centre "Media of Cooperation" focuses on the genesis and distribution of digital and data-intensive media and approaches them as cooperatively accomplished means of cooperation. During the initial funding period we moved beyond the idea of single media and developed a con-ceptual understanding of media as accomplished through infrastructures and publics. By advancing a praxeological perspective which negotiates between past and present the CRC focuses on how cooperative practices are enabled by media and how they respectively co-constitute media themselves. Cooperation in and with digital media is often accomplished without consensus. New sensor-based and increasingly autonomous media particularly advance this develop-ment as their data capture, calculation and valorisation often take place without human meaning and sense making. The underlying intransparent, infrastructural distribution of data via algorithms and smart devices corresponds with d...
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ZusammenfassungDer Aufsatz thematisiert eine zentrale Frage der Digital Methods: Wie ist mit dem stets problematischen Verhältnis von Medienpraktiken zu ihrer verdateten Diskursivierung umzugehen? Am Beispiel des Knolling, der Fotografie... more
ZusammenfassungDer Aufsatz thematisiert eine zentrale Frage der Digital Methods: Wie ist mit dem stets problematischen Verhältnis von Medienpraktiken zu ihrer verdateten Diskursivierung umzugehen? Am Beispiel des Knolling, der Fotografie einer Gruppe von Objekten in rechtwinkligen Draufsichten, zeigen wir, dass die (selbst-)historisierende Diskursivierung für digitale Medienpraktiken eine wichtige Funktion erfüllt: Sie macht sie zu stabilen, transportfähigen Objekten. Popularisierung wird daher nicht als Diffusion, sondern als Übersetzung verstanden. Erst durch Übersetzung vieler verschiedener Fotografierpraktiken in das ›Phänomen‹ Knolling entsteht ein über das Internet popularisierbares Objekt. Ebenso wichtig wie die Transportierbarkeit ist dessen Ästhetik: Die Knolling-Bilder verhandeln Reduktionsversuche vom Ganzen auf Teile et vice versa. Dadurch adressieren sie ein Grundproblem digitalisierter Gesellschaften: Den Umgang mit Black Boxes.AbstractThis article addresses a key problem of digital methods: how are media practices, their data and histories informing each other? Following the example of knolling, a photographic style depicting arrays of objects arranged in rectangular fashion from above, we trace how digital media practices are translated into stable objects capable of travelling by themselves. Thereby, we inquire into the role of media historiographies and narratives of diffusion in this. Popularisation is considered as matter of translation rather than diffusion: Only by means of translating heterogeneous photographing practices into a single phenomenon—namely knolling—a new object that can be popularised on the internet is created. Beyond transportability, the aesthetics of knolling are relevant for its popularisation, as they deal with attempts of reducing wholes to parts et vice versa. In this way, they address a core problem of digitised society: coping with black boxes.
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This paper discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focussing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach arises by paying close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps... more
This paper discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focussing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach arises by paying close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps as software packages, particularly their capacity to enter into diverse groupings and relations depending on different infrastructural situations. The changing situations they evoke and participate in, accordingly, makes apps visible and accountable in a variety of unique ways. Engaging with and even staging these situations, therefore, allows for political-economic, social and cultural dynamics associated with apps and their infrastructures can be investigated through a style of research we describe as multi-situated app studies. The piece offers an overview of four different entry points of enquiry that are exemplary of this overarching framework, focussing on app stores, app interfaces, app packages and app connections. We conclude with nine pro...
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Recently, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the social will be the future organizing principle of economies. This paper will examine how platforms increasingly connect economic value and the social by focusing on the role of... more
Recently, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the social will be the future organizing principle of economies. This paper will examine how platforms increasingly connect economic value and the social by focusing on the role of social buttons. Drawing on digital methods, we explore the growing implementation of social buttons and counters. Special attention is paid to Facebook and its Open Graph which allows the platform to connect to the entire web through the Like Button. Linking Facebook’s efforts to a historical perspective on the hit and link economy, we claim that what might be in the making is not only a social web, but a re-centralized, data intensive fabric - the Like economy. This Like economy can be understood as part of emerging free economies which offer services for free and generate profits via their by-products - in Facebook’s case social activities such as liking, sharing and commenting.
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Data-intensive platform media bring up, but also reconfigure the question of the socio-material grounding of the social. This chapter explores how recent engagements with platforms and digital sociology do more than just vindicate ANT’s... more
Data-intensive platform media bring up, but also reconfigure the question of the socio-material grounding of the social. This chapter explores how recent engagements with platforms and digital sociology do more than just vindicate ANT’s outlook of a flat socio-material account of the social without inbuilt levels of ‘micro’ and ‘macro.’ It argues that social media platforms reconfigure who or what can count as an actor, what counts as social and what as material, and renders these ambivalences a question of method. In a case study of tweets in the run-up to the Brexit vote, this paper engages with the increasing automation of social life through bots, software-enabled activity and cross-syndication services, and inquires into the specific socio-material constitution of the social in platform media and the limits their infrastructures put on ANT’s foundational principle of ‘follow the actor.’ If the socio-material accomplishment is increasingly obfuscated, platform-based methodologie...
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This article offers an investigation into the developer ecosystem of platforms drawing on the specific case of Twitter and explores how third-party clients enable different “ways of being” on Twitter. It suggests that researchers need to... more
This article offers an investigation into the developer ecosystem of platforms drawing on the specific case of Twitter and explores how third-party clients enable different “ways of being” on Twitter. It suggests that researchers need to consider digital data as traces of distributed accomplishments between platforms, users, interfaces, and developers. The argument follows three main steps: We discuss how Twitter’s bounded openness enables and structures distributed data production through grammatization of action. We then suggest ways to explore and qualify sources by drawing on a weeklong data set of nearly 32 million tweets, retrieved from Twitter’s 1% random sample. We explore how clients show considerable differences in tweet characteristics and degrees of automation, and outline methodological steps to deploy the source variable to further investigate the heterogeneous practices common metrics risk flattening into singular counts. We conclude by returning to the question about...
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This paper contends that one of the key contemporary forms of valuation and measurement is selfevaluation. It takes self-evaluation in social media as the empirical focus and introduces to a number of services that allow users to make... more
This paper contends that one of the key contemporary forms of valuation and measurement is selfevaluation. It takes self-evaluation in social media as the empirical focus and introduces to a number of services that allow users to make sense of the data they produce on social media platforms. While users perform increasing amounts of activities and connections, platforms offer only limited possibilities to make sense of one’s own data and often turn activities into fleeting objects on streams and promote immediate interaction without organised access to the past (Berry, 2011; Gehl, 2011). Such a lack has opened up the opportunity for a number of third party self-evaluation applications to emerge.
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In this article, we empirically analyse the infrastructural relations between mobile apps and social media platforms and present a methodology to account for app–platform relations. Contrary to previous research on platforms and apps, we... more
In this article, we empirically analyse the infrastructural relations between mobile apps and social media platforms and present a methodology to account for app–platform relations. Contrary to previous research on platforms and apps, we develop our approach from the perspective of apps based on a relational understanding of infrastructure. Our app-centric approach to platforms and infrastructure provides critical insights into (i) the kinds of third-party apps developed on the peripheries of social media platforms, (ii) the diverse practices and features supported and extended by those apps, and (iii) the messy and contingent nature of the relations between apps and social media platforms. Our approach provides insights into alternative forms of platform programmability beyond APIs and into social media-based ‘innovation’ app ecosystems driven by creative developer workarounds. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative forms of analysis of Android and iOS apps related to Facebook, In...
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The panel engages with conceptual and methodological challenges within a specific area of ‘internet rules’, namely the space of mobile apps. Whereas the web was set out to function as a ‘generative’ and open technology facilitating the... more
The panel engages with conceptual and methodological challenges within a specific area of ‘internet rules’, namely the space of mobile apps. Whereas the web was set out to function as a ‘generative’ and open technology facilitating the production of unanticipated services and applications, the growing popularity of social media platforms, and mobile apps is characterised by proprietary services that facilitate accessibility but obstruct transparency, tinkering, adjustment, and repurposing. This broader development from ‘generative’ technologies to ‘tethered’ devices and services has been referred to as ‘appliancization’ by Jonathan Zittrain (2008). In addition to Zittrain’s focus on the proliferation of proprietary technologies, we suggest that platform infrastructures create specific conditions for the emergence of app ecologies and that apps and platforms are mutually dependent on a technological and economic level. From this perspective, the panel explores a number of novel metho...
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In this article, we explore the relation between platform activities and their usage practices. Taking departure from predefined activities offered by social media platforms, this paper inquires into what may happen if platform features... more
In this article, we explore the relation between platform activities and their usage practices. Taking departure from predefined activities offered by social media platforms, this paper inquires into what may happen if platform features cater to opposing user practices. The paper investigates whether the data they produce can be considered as ‘bad’ platform data, just as Harold Garfinkel conceptualized ‘bad’ clinical records, and does so by engaging with the socio-technical history of Facebook’s Like and Twitter’s retweet and favourite button and their associated cultures of usage. In a first step, we question popular bottom-up narratives that presenti platform features as appropriations of emergent user practices, such as in the case of the retweet button. In a second step, we draw on ethnographic research on the German Favstar sphere - a group of popular Twitter amateurs with specific cooperation practices - to trace the divergent and at points even contradictory user practices in...
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This article offers an investigation into the developer ecosystem of platforms drawing on the specific case of Twitter and explores how third-party clients enable different “ways of being” on Twitter. It suggests that researchers need to... more
This article offers an investigation into the developer ecosystem of platforms drawing on the specific case of Twitter and explores how third-party clients enable different “ways of being” on Twitter. It suggests that researchers need to consider digital data as traces of distributed accomplishments between platforms, users, interfaces, and developers. The argument follows three main steps: We discuss how Twitter’s bounded openness enables and structures distributed data production through grammatization of action. We then suggest ways to explore and qualify sources by drawing on a weeklong data set of nearly 32 million tweets, retrieved from Twitter’s 1% random sample. We explore how clients show considerable differences in tweet characteristics and degrees of automation, and outline methodological steps to deploy the source variable to further investigate the heterogeneous practices common metrics risk flattening into singular counts. We conclude by returning to the question about...
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Introduction Social media platforms present numerous challenges to empirical research, making it different from researching cases in offline environments, but also different from studying the “open” Web. Because of the limited access... more
Introduction Social media platforms present numerous challenges to empirical research, making it different from researching cases in offline environments, but also different from studying the “open” Web. Because of the limited access possibilities and the sheer size of platforms like Facebook or Twitter, the question of delimitation, i.e. the selection of subsets to analyse, is particularly relevant. Whilst sampling techniques have been thoroughly discussed in the context of social science research (Uprichard; Noy; Bryman; Gilbert; Gorard), sampling procedures in the context of social media analysis are far from being fully understood. Even for Twitter, a platform having received considerable attention from empirical researchers due to its relative openness to data collection, methodology is largely emergent. In particular the question of how smaller collections relate to the entirety of activities of the platform is quite unclear. Recent work comparing case based studies to gain a ...
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A recent report from the UN makes the case for “global data literacy” in order to realise the opportunities afforded by the “data revolution”. Here and in many other contexts, data literacy is characterised in terms of a combination of... more
A recent report from the UN makes the case for “global data literacy” in order to realise the opportunities afforded by the “data revolution”. Here and in many other contexts, data literacy is characterised in terms of a combination of numerical, statistical and technical capacities. In this article, we argue for an expansion of the concept to include not just competencies in reading and working with datasets but also the ability to account for, intervene around and participate in the wider socio-technical infrastructures through which data is created, stored and analysed – which we call “data infrastructure literacy”. We illustrate this notion with examples of “inventive data practice” from previous and ongoing research on open data, online platforms, data journalism and data activism. Drawing on these perspectives, we argue that data literacy initiatives might cultivate sensibilities not only for data science but also for data sociology, data politics as well as wider public engag...
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Social media platforms have been characterised by their programmability, affordances, constraints and stakeholders - the question of value and valuation of platforms, their data and features has, however, received less attention in... more
Social media platforms have been characterised by their programmability, affordances, constraints and stakeholders - the question of value and valuation of platforms, their data and features has, however, received less attention in platform studies. This paper explores the specific socio-technical conditions for valuating platform data and suggests that platforms set up their data to become multivalent, that is to be valuable alongside multiple, possibly conflicting value regimes. Drawing on both platform and valuation studies, it asks how the production, storing and circulation of data, its connection to user action and the various stakeholders of platforms contribute to its valuation. Platform data, the paper suggests, is the outcome of capture systems which allow to collapse action and its capture into pre-structured data forms which remain open to divergent interpretations. Platforms offer such grammars of action both to users and other stakeholders in frontand back-ends, inviti...
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This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called ‘interface methods’. We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and... more
This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called ‘interface methods’. We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasized the significant differences between prominent methods built into digital media and those of STS and sociology. This paper advocates a third approach, one that (a) highlights the dynamism and relative under-determinacy of digital methods, and (b) affirms that multiple methodological traditions intersect in digital devices and research. We argue that these two circumstances enable a distinctive approach to methodology in digital social research – thinking methods as ‘interface methods’ – and the paper contextualizes this approach in two differen...
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This paper takes tools of self-valuation in social media as an empirical focus. By way of a case-study of Klout, an influential measure of influence, we suggest that the forms of reactivity and self-fulfilling prophecy that have been... more
This paper takes tools of self-valuation in social media as an empirical focus. By way of a case-study of Klout, an influential measure of influence, we suggest that the forms of reactivity and self-fulfilling prophecy that have been identified as a problem with some forms of measurement are actually an intentional effect of such tools: that is, the measurements that such tools produce are not designed to capture a separate reality, but are deliberately employed to modify the activity that they themselves invite. In other words, they expect and exploit reactivity. We suggest that such media are indicative of the rise in what might be called participative metrics of value. We further suggest that the capacity to evaluate and modify the self that Klout affords is intricately tied up with the agency and (self-)valuation of Klout as a tool itself. An intermediate layer of the argument is that this tying up is achieved through the production of numbers as specific kinds of ‘enumerated entities’. We use this term to draw attention to the ways in which numbers are never simply abstractions, but always have specific material-semiotic properties. In this case, we show that these properties are tied to the use of media-specific operations, and that these properties, including those of inclusion and belonging, inform how Klout participates in particular kinds of ordering and valuation. We thus explore the interlinked movement of numbers, media, and value in social media as a kind of dynamic assemblage.
Research Interests: Computer Science, Participation, Evaluation, Social Media, Platform Studies, and 13 moreSocial Media Metrics, Philosophy and Religious Studies, Klout, Assemblage Theory, Value, Language Culture and Communication, Valuation, Numerical Ordering, Ranking, Ordering, Routledge, Social Media Platforms, and Valuation Studies
This paper enquires into the politics of real-time in online media. It suggests that real-time cannot be accounted for as a universal temporal frame in which events happen, but explores the making of real-time from a device perspective... more
This paper enquires into the politics of real-time in online media. It suggests that real-time cannot be accounted for as a universal temporal frame in which events happen, but explores the making of real-time from a device perspective focusing on the temporalities of platforms. Based on an empirical study exploring the pace at which various online media produce new content, we trace the different rhythms, patterns or tempos created by the interplay of devices, users’ web activities and issues. What emerges are distinct forms of ‘realtimeness’ which are not external from but specific to devices, organized through socio-technical arrangements and practices of use. Realtimeness thus unflattens more general accounts of the real-time web and research, and draws attention to the agencies built into specific platform temporalities and the political economies of making real-time.
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The paper examines Facebook’s ambition to extend into the entire web by focusing on social buttons and developing a medium-specific platform critique. It contextualises the rise of buttons and counters as metrics for user engagement and... more
The paper examines Facebook’s ambition to extend into the entire web by focusing on social buttons and developing a medium-specific platform critique. It contextualises the rise of buttons and counters as metrics for user engagement and links them to different web economies. Facebook’s Like buttons enable multiple data flows between various actors, contributing to a simultaneous de- and re-centralisation of the web. They allow the instant transformation of user engagement into numbers on button counters, which can be traded and multiplied but also function as tracking devices. The increasing presence of buttons and associated social plugins on the web creates new forms of connectivity between websites, introducing an alternative fabric of the web. Contrary to Facebook’s claim to promote a more social experience of the web, this paper explores the implementation and technical infrastructure of such buttons to conceptualise them as part of a so-called ‘Like economy’.
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This article discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focusing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach involves close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps as... more
This article discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focusing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach involves close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps as software packages, particularly their capacity to enter into diverse groupings and relations depending on different infrastructural situations. The changing situations they evoke and participate in, accordingly, make apps visible and accountable in a variety of unique ways. Therefore, engaging with and even staging these situations allows for political-economic, social, and cultural dynamics associated with apps and their infrastructures to be investigated through a style of research we describe as multi-situated app studies. This article offers an overview of four different entry points of enquiry that are exemplary of this multi-situated approach, focusing on app stores, app interfaces, app packages, and app connections. We conclude with nine proposi...
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Der Aufsatz thematisiert eine zentrale Frage der Digital Methods: Wie ist mit dem stets problematischen Verhältnis von Medienpraktiken zu ihrer verdateten Diskursivierung umzugehen? Am Beispiel des Knolling, der Fotografie einer Gruppe von... more
Der Aufsatz thematisiert eine zentrale Frage der Digital Methods: Wie ist mit dem stets problematischen Verhältnis von Medienpraktiken zu ihrer verdateten Diskursivierung umzugehen? Am Beispiel des Knolling, der Fotografie einer Gruppe von Objekten in rechtwinkligen Draufsichten, zeigen wir, dass die(selbst-)historisierende Diskursivierung für digitale Medienpraktiken eine wichtige Funktion erfüllt: Sie macht sie zu stabilen, transportfähigen Objekten. Popularisierung wird daher nicht als Diffusion, sondern als Übersetzung verstanden. Erst durch Übersetzung vieler verschiedener Fotografierpraktiken in das ›Phänomen‹ Knolling entsteht ein über das Internet popularisierbares Objekt. Ebenso wichtig wie die Transportierbarkeit ist dessen Ästhetik: Die Knolling-Bilder verhandeln Reduktionsversuche vom Ganz en auf Teile et vice versa. Dadurch adressieren sie einGrundproblem digitalisierter Gesellschaften: Den Umgang mit Black Boxes.
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This paper takes tools of self-valuation in social media as an empirical focus. By way of a case-study of Klout, an influential measure of influence, we suggest that the forms of reactivity and self-fulfilling prophecy that have been... more
This paper takes tools of self-valuation in social media as an empirical focus. By way of a case-study of Klout, an influential measure of influence, we suggest that the forms of reactivity and self-fulfilling prophecy that have been identified as a problem with some forms of measurement are actually an intentional effect of such tools: that is, the measurements that such tools produce are not designed to capture a separate reality, but are deliberately employed to modify the activity that they themselves invite. In other words, they expect and exploit reactivity. We suggest that such media are indicative of the rise in what might be called participative metrics of value. We further suggest that the capacity to evaluate and modify the self that Klout affords is intricately tied up with the agency and (self-)valuation of Klout as a tool itself. An intermediate layer of the argument is that this tying up is achieved through the production of numbers as specific kinds of ‘enumerated entities’. We use this term to draw attention to the ways in which numbers are never simply abstractions, but always have specific material-semiotic properties. In this case, we show that these properties are tied to the use of media-specific operations, and that these properties, including those of inclusion and belonging, inform how Klout participates in particular kinds of ordering and valuation. We thus explore the interlinked movement of numbers, media, and value in social media as a kind of dynamic assemblage.
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This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called “interface methods.” We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and... more
This paper introduces a distinctive approach to methods development in digital social research called “interface methods.” We begin by discussing various methodological confluences between digital media, social studies of science and technology (STS) and sociology. Some authors have posited significant overlap between, on the one hand, sociological and STS concepts, and on the other hand, the ontologies of digital media. Others have emphasised the significant differences between prominent methods built into digital media and those of STS and Sociology. This paper advocates a third approach, one that a) highlights the dynamism and relative under-determinacy of digital methods, and b) affirms that multiple methodological traditions intersect in digital devices and research. We argue that these two circumstances enable a distinctive approach to methodology in digital social research - ‘interface methods’ - and the paper contextualizes this approach in two different ways: first, we show how the proliferation of online data tools or ‘digital analytics’ opens up distinctive opportunities for critical and creative engagement with methods development at the intersection of sociology, STS and digital research. Second, we discuss a digital research project in which we investigated a specific ‘interface method’, namely co-occurrence analysis. The second half of the paper presents a digital pilot study in which we implemented this method in a critical and creative way to analyse and visualise ‘issue dynamics’ in the area of climate change on Twitter. We evaluate this project in the light of our principal objective, which was to test the possibilities for the critical and creative adaptation and modification of this method through its experimental implementation. To conclude, we discuss a major obstacle to the development of ‘interface methods’: digital media are marked by particular quantitative dynamics that seem adverse to the methodological commitments of sociology and STS. To address this, we argue in favour of a methodological approach in digital social research that affirms its mal-adjustment to the social methods that are prevalent in the medium.
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There is a plethora of publications emerging in the humanities, especially media studies, thatuse data-points from social media platforms in order to investigate social interaction and cultural production. Data-points taken from social... more
There is a plethora of publications emerging in the humanities, especially media studies, thatuse data-points from social media platforms in order to investigate social interaction and cultural production. Data-points taken from social media platforms are used for calculating metrics on the most diverse aspects of users and use. As Carolin Gerlitzhas pointed out, research practices tend to treat these data-points alike in spite of the fact that they take on different functions (Gerlitz and Rieder 2013) and even though they are used by different social groups (Bruns and Stieglitz 2013). Drawing on Espeland and Stevens (1998), Gerlitz calls this the commensuration of data-points and formulates a data-point critique.
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Social media platforms have been characterised by their programma-bility, affordances, constraints and stakeholders – the question of value and valuation of platforms, their data and features has, however, received less attention in... more
Social media platforms have been characterised by their programma-bility, affordances, constraints and stakeholders – the question of value and valuation of platforms, their data and features has, however, received less attention in platform studies. This paper explores the specific socio-technical conditions for valuating platform data and suggests that platforms set up their data to become multivalent, that is to be valuable alongside multiple, possibly conflicting value regimes. Drawing on both platform and valuation studies, it asks how the production , storing and circulation of data, its connection to user action and the various stakeholders of platforms contribute to its valuation. Platform data, the paper suggests, is the outcome of capture systems which allow to collapse action and its capture into pre-structured data forms which remain open to divergent interpretations. Platforms offer such grammars of action both to users and other stakeholders in front-and back-ends, inviting them to produce and engage with its data following heterogeneous orders of worth. Platform data can participate in different valuation regimes at the same time – however, the paper concludes, not all actors can participate in all modes of valuation, as in the end, it is the platform that sets the conditions for participation. The paper offers a conceptual perspective to interrogate what data counts by attending to questions of quantification, its entangle-ment with valuation and the various technologies and stakeholders involved. It finishes with an empirical experiment to map the various ways in which Instagram data is made to count.
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Theorieteil Software-based data collection Welche Daten werden in digitalen Medien produziert und wie sind diese durch digitale und software-basierte Methoden für die Forschung zugänglich? Diese Sitzung beschäftigt sich mit den... more
Theorieteil Software-based data collection
Welche Daten werden in digitalen Medien produziert und wie sind diese durch digitale und software-basierte Methoden für die Forschung zugänglich? Diese Sitzung beschäftigt sich mit den Traditionen, Möglichkeiten und Herausforderungen von software basierter Datenerhebung mit Schwerpunkt auf sogenannte Digital Research Methods und web native data. Ausgehend von online Plattformen wie Google, Twitter und Facebook wird die Spezifizität digitaler Daten betrachtet und diskutiert, wie software basierte Datenerhebung in den empirischen Zyklus von Erhebung, Ergebnis und Analyse eingreift, was der Wert von Small und Big Data ist und ob digitale Daten mehr über Medien oder über sozio-kulturelle Prozesse aussagen.
Praxisteil Software-based data collection
Diese Sitzung gibt eine Einführung in software-basierten Forschungsmethoden und Tools die im Kontext der Digital Methode Initiative, Amsterdam entwickelt wurden. Vorgestellt werden Tools, die sich sowohl Daten als auch analytische Kapazitäten von online Plattformen “aneignen” und für die empirische Forschung zugänglich machen, wie zum Beispiel Google Scraper, Issue Crawler und Twitter Capture and Analytics Toolset (zugänglich unter https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase). Im Kontext eines Mini-Projekts erhalten Teilnehmende Einblicke in dem Umgang mit diesen medium-spezifischen Methoden und können ihre Möglichkeiten sowie Grenzen diskutieren - bitte Laptop mitbringen.
Welche Daten werden in digitalen Medien produziert und wie sind diese durch digitale und software-basierte Methoden für die Forschung zugänglich? Diese Sitzung beschäftigt sich mit den Traditionen, Möglichkeiten und Herausforderungen von software basierter Datenerhebung mit Schwerpunkt auf sogenannte Digital Research Methods und web native data. Ausgehend von online Plattformen wie Google, Twitter und Facebook wird die Spezifizität digitaler Daten betrachtet und diskutiert, wie software basierte Datenerhebung in den empirischen Zyklus von Erhebung, Ergebnis und Analyse eingreift, was der Wert von Small und Big Data ist und ob digitale Daten mehr über Medien oder über sozio-kulturelle Prozesse aussagen.
Praxisteil Software-based data collection
Diese Sitzung gibt eine Einführung in software-basierten Forschungsmethoden und Tools die im Kontext der Digital Methode Initiative, Amsterdam entwickelt wurden. Vorgestellt werden Tools, die sich sowohl Daten als auch analytische Kapazitäten von online Plattformen “aneignen” und für die empirische Forschung zugänglich machen, wie zum Beispiel Google Scraper, Issue Crawler und Twitter Capture and Analytics Toolset (zugänglich unter https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDatabase). Im Kontext eines Mini-Projekts erhalten Teilnehmende Einblicke in dem Umgang mit diesen medium-spezifischen Methoden und können ihre Möglichkeiten sowie Grenzen diskutieren - bitte Laptop mitbringen.
In an interview about the future of social media, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg claims that: ”our goal is to make everything social. (…) If you look five years out, every industry is going to be rethought in a social way.” (Gelles 2010). Social... more
In an interview about the future of social media, Facebook CEO Zuckerberg claims that: ”our goal is to make everything social. (…) If you look five years out, every industry is going to be rethought in a social way.” (Gelles 2010). Social activities, social relations and social value has been the focal point of much economic frenzy in the context of social media recently, as the social web is enabling new forms of organising social life and economic value production, while creating ever new relations between them.
This paper asks how Facebook has increasingly tied up the making of social and economic value by deploying a medium-specific perspective. It investigates how web objects specific to social media platforms are embedded in but also reconfigure web economies and explores the methodological potential of medium-specificity (Rogers 2009) for the study of socio-economic dynamics. The empirical focus of the paper are Like buttons and the newly introduced Want buttons and Collections, as well as their underlying cookies and tracking features, which at the same time invite for certain activities as framing devices, but also allow to render the actions they engender multivalent (Marres 2012). Clicking a social button is set up as co-articulation by the platform, as both social, economic and data-intensive activity, operating simultaneously alongside multiple value axis without collapsing them into each other.
Doing so, Facebook features create a specific continuity (Bell 2009) between the social and the economic, in which social (inter)action becomes increasingly partible (Strathern 1990), that is partly detached from users and partly attached and re-used by platforms or involved third party services such as advertisers or cooperating partners. It is the process of rendering social actions into specific forms of data that allows for both multi-valence and partibility, transforming intensive affective responses to web content and other users’ activities into comparable data points or enumerated entities (Verran 2010) which can enter ever new relations (Mackenzie 2012) and exchange flows in the backend. Contemporary social web economies, this paper concludes, are being animated by the making of continuity and multi-valence, ensuring the ongoing social engagement, whilst transposing it into new forms and facilitating its continuation into valuable directions through recommendation and notification features.
This paper asks how Facebook has increasingly tied up the making of social and economic value by deploying a medium-specific perspective. It investigates how web objects specific to social media platforms are embedded in but also reconfigure web economies and explores the methodological potential of medium-specificity (Rogers 2009) for the study of socio-economic dynamics. The empirical focus of the paper are Like buttons and the newly introduced Want buttons and Collections, as well as their underlying cookies and tracking features, which at the same time invite for certain activities as framing devices, but also allow to render the actions they engender multivalent (Marres 2012). Clicking a social button is set up as co-articulation by the platform, as both social, economic and data-intensive activity, operating simultaneously alongside multiple value axis without collapsing them into each other.
Doing so, Facebook features create a specific continuity (Bell 2009) between the social and the economic, in which social (inter)action becomes increasingly partible (Strathern 1990), that is partly detached from users and partly attached and re-used by platforms or involved third party services such as advertisers or cooperating partners. It is the process of rendering social actions into specific forms of data that allows for both multi-valence and partibility, transforming intensive affective responses to web content and other users’ activities into comparable data points or enumerated entities (Verran 2010) which can enter ever new relations (Mackenzie 2012) and exchange flows in the backend. Contemporary social web economies, this paper concludes, are being animated by the making of continuity and multi-valence, ensuring the ongoing social engagement, whilst transposing it into new forms and facilitating its continuation into valuable directions through recommendation and notification features.
"The engagement with social media content through retweets, favs, likes, shares or picks has increasingly been conceptualized in terms of ‘gift economies’ (Paßmann et al 2013), as these activities not only allow for the circulation of web... more
"The engagement with social media content through retweets, favs, likes, shares or picks has increasingly been conceptualized in terms of ‘gift economies’ (Paßmann et al 2013), as these activities not only allow for the circulation of web content, but contribute to specific forms of social ordering and mutual obligations. However, social media activities come with a different quality. They allow for the transformation of intensive, relational gifts into seemingly comparable and countable forms of numbers of favs, likes or tweets (Gerlitz & Helmond 2013). In their capacity to store and exchange value, they seem to operate like currencies. But currencies and gifts traditionally organise two divergent forms of exchange: the intensive exchange of gifts potentially entangles actors in mutual obligations, while extensive currency transactions allow to even out these obligations (Malinowski 1932, Gregory 1982).
In this paper we are concerned with the question, in how far social media create a specific convergence between gifts and currencies. Engaging with the German Twitter and Favstar sphere as site of empirical inquiry, we ask how favs, retweets but also Flattrs create, transform and accumulate value. Thus the question emerges whether social media foster a form of hybrid gift-currencies, which render gifting and commercial exchange increasingly interdependent, or whether social media gifts merely mimic currencies without transforming its traditional character.
While social media currencies seemingly allow to transform intensive gift giving into extensive, comparable and accountable forms (DeLanda 2002), we show by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, that they come an inbuilt ambiguity of accountability, as favs or retweets might bear a multiplicity of social meaning. Or can social media activities function as social currencies precisely because they are multi-valent (Marres 2012) and partible (Strathern 1990), that is as long as their actual value remains ambivalent and is not called for explication? The more general question is, if social media renders gifts more accountable, does that undermine the (obligating) character of the gift as such, or whether this only surfaces a fundamental characteristic of the gift that remained mostly implicit in previous forms of gift giving."
In this paper we are concerned with the question, in how far social media create a specific convergence between gifts and currencies. Engaging with the German Twitter and Favstar sphere as site of empirical inquiry, we ask how favs, retweets but also Flattrs create, transform and accumulate value. Thus the question emerges whether social media foster a form of hybrid gift-currencies, which render gifting and commercial exchange increasingly interdependent, or whether social media gifts merely mimic currencies without transforming its traditional character.
While social media currencies seemingly allow to transform intensive gift giving into extensive, comparable and accountable forms (DeLanda 2002), we show by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, that they come an inbuilt ambiguity of accountability, as favs or retweets might bear a multiplicity of social meaning. Or can social media activities function as social currencies precisely because they are multi-valent (Marres 2012) and partible (Strathern 1990), that is as long as their actual value remains ambivalent and is not called for explication? The more general question is, if social media renders gifts more accountable, does that undermine the (obligating) character of the gift as such, or whether this only surfaces a fundamental characteristic of the gift that remained mostly implicit in previous forms of gift giving."
The engagement with social media content through retweets, favs, likes, shares or picks has increasingly been conceptualized in terms of ‘gift economies’ (Paßmann et al 2013), as these activities not only allow for the circulation of web... more
The engagement with social media content through retweets, favs, likes, shares or picks has increasingly been conceptualized in terms of ‘gift economies’ (Paßmann et al 2013), as these activities not only allow for the circulation of web content, but contribute to specific forms of social ordering and mutual obligations. However, social media activities come with a different quality. They allow for the transformation of intensive, relational gifts into seemingly comparable and countable forms of numbers of favs, likes or tweets (Gerlitz & Helmond 2013). In their capacity to store and exchange value, they seem to operate like currencies. But currencies and gifts traditionally organise two divergent forms of exchange: the intensive exchange of gifts potentially entangles actors in mutual obligations, while extensive currency transactions allow to even out these obligations (Malinowski 1932, Gregory 1982).
In this paper we are concerned with the question, in how far social media create a specific convergence between gifts and currencies. Engaging with the German Twitter and Favstar sphere as site of empirical inquiry, we ask how favs, retweets but also Flattrs create, transform and accumulate value. Thus the question emerges whether social media foster a form of hybrid gift-currencies, which render gifting and commercial exchange increasingly interdependent, or whether social media gifts merely mimic currencies without transforming its traditional character.
While social media currencies seemingly allow to transform intensive gift giving into extensive, comparable and accountable forms (DeLanda 2002), we show by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, that they come an inbuilt ambiguity of accountability, as favs or retweets might bear a multiplicity of social meaning. Or can social media activities function as social currencies precisely because they are multi-valent (Marres 2012) and partible (Strathern 1990), that is as long as their actual value remains ambivalent and is not called for explication? The more general question is, if social media renders gifts more accountable, does that undermine the (obligating) character of the gift as such, or whether this only surfaces a fundamental characteristic of the gift that remained mostly implicit in previous forms of gift giving.
In this paper we are concerned with the question, in how far social media create a specific convergence between gifts and currencies. Engaging with the German Twitter and Favstar sphere as site of empirical inquiry, we ask how favs, retweets but also Flattrs create, transform and accumulate value. Thus the question emerges whether social media foster a form of hybrid gift-currencies, which render gifting and commercial exchange increasingly interdependent, or whether social media gifts merely mimic currencies without transforming its traditional character.
While social media currencies seemingly allow to transform intensive gift giving into extensive, comparable and accountable forms (DeLanda 2002), we show by drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, that they come an inbuilt ambiguity of accountability, as favs or retweets might bear a multiplicity of social meaning. Or can social media activities function as social currencies precisely because they are multi-valent (Marres 2012) and partible (Strathern 1990), that is as long as their actual value remains ambivalent and is not called for explication? The more general question is, if social media renders gifts more accountable, does that undermine the (obligating) character of the gift as such, or whether this only surfaces a fundamental characteristic of the gift that remained mostly implicit in previous forms of gift giving.
"Pace, closely related to rhythm or tempo, is a term used to describe the relative speed of progress or change, or the rate of some repeating event. Pace, we suggest, is a way to study realtime dynamics empirically. Specifically, this... more
"Pace, closely related to rhythm or tempo, is a term used to describe the relative speed of progress or change, or the rate of some repeating event. Pace, we suggest, is a way to study realtime dynamics empirically. Specifically, this article seeks to advance thinking about realtime by focusing on the relation between the update cycles of content and the computational pacing of change by web devices. Doing so, the article traces the infrastructures, features and objects that organise pace in a selection of platforms and engines, drawing attention to the dynamics that are specific and internal to media spaces. Based on an empirical study exploring the pace of an issue across web devices, it identifies how the organisation of content, its presentation and user actions produce very specific rates of realtime.
Of particular interest will be the relation between freshness and relevance as modes of organising online dynamics, following the assumption that fresh and relevant content create distinct paces and that the pace within each device is internally different and multiple in itself. In response to the idea of realtime as actual time or process speed, the paper further complicates the idea of a single notion of realtime and proposes to speak of multiple realtimes by specifying how realtimes are different per web device. This specification of pace enables to revisit the notion of realtime online, suggesting that realtime cannot be accounted for as temporal frame in which events happen or content is encountered in the now. Instead, web devices create specific forms of so-called ‘realtimeness’, in which realtime engagement with information and content is organised through features such as freshness and relevance. Pace and realtime online, the article suggests, are tied up to specific media spaces and their organisation of content. "
Of particular interest will be the relation between freshness and relevance as modes of organising online dynamics, following the assumption that fresh and relevant content create distinct paces and that the pace within each device is internally different and multiple in itself. In response to the idea of realtime as actual time or process speed, the paper further complicates the idea of a single notion of realtime and proposes to speak of multiple realtimes by specifying how realtimes are different per web device. This specification of pace enables to revisit the notion of realtime online, suggesting that realtime cannot be accounted for as temporal frame in which events happen or content is encountered in the now. Instead, web devices create specific forms of so-called ‘realtimeness’, in which realtime engagement with information and content is organised through features such as freshness and relevance. Pace and realtime online, the article suggests, are tied up to specific media spaces and their organisation of content. "
This paper focuses on the increasing prevalence of devices for self-evaluation in the context of social media, that is tools that allow users to make sense of the activities and data they produce in social media platforms. While... more
This paper focuses on the increasing prevalence of devices for
self-evaluation in the context of social media, that is tools that
allow users to make sense of the activities and data they produce
in social media platforms. While platforms focus on creating
climates of immediacy and now-ness, they offer little access the
past, to retrospectively search and make sense of one’s data. This
lack has lead to the emergence of numerous self-evaluation tools,
offering a re-organisation of data, activities and temporalities.
The primary focus lies on the performative capacities of such
tools, as suggested in the work of Power, Strathern and Espeland,
showing that the measurements they create are not designed to
capture a separate reality, but function as framing devices,
inviting some types of awareness, and action while ruling out
others. The framing dynamics are explored by focusing on the
production of numbers as enumerated entities (Verran 2010),
drawing attention to how numbers are never simply abstractions,
but construct relations and temporalities, most particularly
through algorithmic rankings and dynamics of ordinality. The
role of numbers is understood in relation to dynamics of
mediation and medium-specificity (Rogers 2009). Self-evaluative
tools not only draw on data and activities specific to social media
platforms, they also allow for new modes of organising these
activities, data and temporalities. The interlinked movement of
numbers, media and selves in self-evaluation is explored as
dynamic assemblage, opening up engagement with selected
intervals of the past, in order to create climates of anticipation
and future orientation.
self-evaluation in the context of social media, that is tools that
allow users to make sense of the activities and data they produce
in social media platforms. While platforms focus on creating
climates of immediacy and now-ness, they offer little access the
past, to retrospectively search and make sense of one’s data. This
lack has lead to the emergence of numerous self-evaluation tools,
offering a re-organisation of data, activities and temporalities.
The primary focus lies on the performative capacities of such
tools, as suggested in the work of Power, Strathern and Espeland,
showing that the measurements they create are not designed to
capture a separate reality, but function as framing devices,
inviting some types of awareness, and action while ruling out
others. The framing dynamics are explored by focusing on the
production of numbers as enumerated entities (Verran 2010),
drawing attention to how numbers are never simply abstractions,
but construct relations and temporalities, most particularly
through algorithmic rankings and dynamics of ordinality. The
role of numbers is understood in relation to dynamics of
mediation and medium-specificity (Rogers 2009). Self-evaluative
tools not only draw on data and activities specific to social media
platforms, they also allow for new modes of organising these
activities, data and temporalities. The interlinked movement of
numbers, media and selves in self-evaluation is explored as
dynamic assemblage, opening up engagement with selected
intervals of the past, in order to create climates of anticipation
and future orientation.
Co-presented with Anne Helmond
This project sets out to advance the study of mobile apps at the intersection with platform studies and explores what both fields of study may learn from each other. A novel empirical methodology is developed to explore the intricate... more
This project sets out to advance the study of mobile apps at the intersection with platform studies and explores what both fields of study may learn from each other. A novel empirical methodology is developed to explore the intricate relations between mobile apps and social media platforms. Our findings suggest to think of apps as relational software entities, simultaneously situated and distributed. Apps exist as part of wider ecologies made up of programmable infrastructures and controlled data flows.
Research Interests:
This paper discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focussing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach arises by paying close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps... more
This paper discusses methodological approaches to app studies, focussing on their embeddedness and situatedness within multiple infrastructural settings. Our approach arises by paying close attention to the multivalent affordances of apps as software packages, particularly their capacity to enter into diverse groupings and relations depending on different infrastructural situations. The changing situations they evoke and participate in, accordingly, makes apps visible and accountable in a variety of unique ways. Engaging with and even staging these situations, therefore, allows for political-economic, social and cultural dynamics associated with apps and their infrastructures can be investigated through a style of research we describe as multi-situated app studies. The piece offers an overview of four different entry points of enquiry that are exemplary of this overarching framework, focussing on app stores, app interfaces, app packages and app connections. We conclude with nine propositions that develop out of these studies as prompts for further research.
Research Interests:
The panel engages with conceptual and methodological challenges within a specific area of ‘internet rules’, namely the space of mobile apps. Whereas the web was set out to function as a ‘generative’ and open technology facilitating the... more
The panel engages with conceptual and methodological challenges within a specific area of ‘internet rules’, namely the space of mobile apps. Whereas the web was set out to function as a ‘generative’ and open technology facilitating the production of unanticipated services and applications, the growing popularity of social media platforms, and mobile apps is characterised by proprietary services that facilitate accessibility but obstruct transparency, tinkering, adjustment, and repurposing. This broader development from ‘generative’ technologies to ‘tethered’ devices and services has been referred to as ‘appliancization’ by Jonathan Zittrain (2008). In addition to Zittrain’s focus on the proliferation of proprietary technologies, we suggest that platform infrastructures create specific conditions for the emergence of app ecologies and that apps and platforms are mutually dependent on a technological and economic level.
From this perspective, the panel explores a number of novel methodologies for app studies. So far, methodological approaches for studying apps have focused on end-user interfaces and how users interpret app affordances (McVeigh-Schultz and Baym 2015), qualitative analyses of their political economies and the politics of location (Dyer-Witheford 2014; Wilken and Bayliss 2015), their social norms of use (Humphreys 2007) or their affective capacities (Matviyenko et al. 2015). The empirical investigation of apps and their ecologies currently faces multiple challenges: First, in contrast to most data collected from web sites and platforms, user activities can neither be simply observed or scraped from front-end interfaces nor easily be collected via APIs. In order to access app data, researchers may need to participate in using the app, which only affords a partial view (e.g. in the case of Tinder, Snapchat, and messaging apps) thereby opening up a number of ethical concerns. Second, method development has to respond to apps’ fast update cultures. Like other internet-enabled technologies, apps are considered as services rather than products and have frequent development cycles, including design and features changes, which do not only require researchers to constantly adjust their tools and approaches, but which also make it particularly difficult to reconstruct the history of an app or its features.
This panel responds to these methodological challenges by advancing methodological approaches that all share a common device or medium-specific perspective, departing from the specific features of each app to attend to its data ecologies, political economies, practices, or histories, whilst reflecting critically on the relations between method and medium. One contribution advances digital methods for app analysis by mapping larger platform ecosystems in which apps emerge and thrive. It explores how apps reinforce, alter, and interfere in the interpretation of social media platforms and their features. Engaging with Facebook’s mobile app and its political economy, the second paper attends to the difficulties of getting access to historical app information whilst tracing relations between the introduction of new features and the advancement of the platform’s business model. A different approach to writing a microhistory of apps is offered in the third paper on the Twitter’s retweet button. Bringing together historical and ethnographic insights, this paper offers a detailed narrative of the becoming of a platform feature at the intersection of technicity, use practices, third-party apps and platform politics. The fourth and final paper focuses on the WeChat app and draws on ethnographic methods to explore the affordances of entanglement when the only way to study an app is by joining and participating in it.
All four papers approach apps not as discrete technologies, but as being situated and subject to distributed accomplishments of technicity, economics, practices, data, third parties, and platform politics. They connect platform studies and app studies by drawing attention to their intricate relations, e.g. in the case of platforms offering apps, apps built on top of platforms, apps facilitating practices that inform platforms, and apps functioning as platforms. The papers outline relations between and gaps in app and platform studies, as the study of platforms has identified the relevance of data circulation and the involvement of third parties, but has not explicitly asked how apps capitalise on platforms and vice-versa, or how they reinvent and inscribe into each other. From the perspective of app studies, adding a focus on platforms allows researchers to map the ecologies in which app data circulates as well as the regulatory rules and conditions for their development. The panel thus advances the field of app studies by exploring novel methods for empirical app research which allows to attend to the technicity, political economy, history, and enactment of app ecologies.
From this perspective, the panel explores a number of novel methodologies for app studies. So far, methodological approaches for studying apps have focused on end-user interfaces and how users interpret app affordances (McVeigh-Schultz and Baym 2015), qualitative analyses of their political economies and the politics of location (Dyer-Witheford 2014; Wilken and Bayliss 2015), their social norms of use (Humphreys 2007) or their affective capacities (Matviyenko et al. 2015). The empirical investigation of apps and their ecologies currently faces multiple challenges: First, in contrast to most data collected from web sites and platforms, user activities can neither be simply observed or scraped from front-end interfaces nor easily be collected via APIs. In order to access app data, researchers may need to participate in using the app, which only affords a partial view (e.g. in the case of Tinder, Snapchat, and messaging apps) thereby opening up a number of ethical concerns. Second, method development has to respond to apps’ fast update cultures. Like other internet-enabled technologies, apps are considered as services rather than products and have frequent development cycles, including design and features changes, which do not only require researchers to constantly adjust their tools and approaches, but which also make it particularly difficult to reconstruct the history of an app or its features.
This panel responds to these methodological challenges by advancing methodological approaches that all share a common device or medium-specific perspective, departing from the specific features of each app to attend to its data ecologies, political economies, practices, or histories, whilst reflecting critically on the relations between method and medium. One contribution advances digital methods for app analysis by mapping larger platform ecosystems in which apps emerge and thrive. It explores how apps reinforce, alter, and interfere in the interpretation of social media platforms and their features. Engaging with Facebook’s mobile app and its political economy, the second paper attends to the difficulties of getting access to historical app information whilst tracing relations between the introduction of new features and the advancement of the platform’s business model. A different approach to writing a microhistory of apps is offered in the third paper on the Twitter’s retweet button. Bringing together historical and ethnographic insights, this paper offers a detailed narrative of the becoming of a platform feature at the intersection of technicity, use practices, third-party apps and platform politics. The fourth and final paper focuses on the WeChat app and draws on ethnographic methods to explore the affordances of entanglement when the only way to study an app is by joining and participating in it.
All four papers approach apps not as discrete technologies, but as being situated and subject to distributed accomplishments of technicity, economics, practices, data, third parties, and platform politics. They connect platform studies and app studies by drawing attention to their intricate relations, e.g. in the case of platforms offering apps, apps built on top of platforms, apps facilitating practices that inform platforms, and apps functioning as platforms. The papers outline relations between and gaps in app and platform studies, as the study of platforms has identified the relevance of data circulation and the involvement of third parties, but has not explicitly asked how apps capitalise on platforms and vice-versa, or how they reinvent and inscribe into each other. From the perspective of app studies, adding a focus on platforms allows researchers to map the ecologies in which app data circulates as well as the regulatory rules and conditions for their development. The panel thus advances the field of app studies by exploring novel methods for empirical app research which allows to attend to the technicity, political economy, history, and enactment of app ecologies.
Research Interests:
This PhD thesis provides a sociological investigation of contemporary branding practices and their increasing investment in consumer involvement, participation and co-creation. Revisiting the role of brands in contemporary capitalism, it... more
This PhD thesis provides a sociological investigation of contemporary branding practices and
their increasing investment in consumer involvement, participation and co-creation.
Revisiting the role of brands in contemporary capitalism, it shows that brands are not
discrete, purely economic entities, but emerge in relations to multiple actors and are
distributed across a series of spaces, societal issues and temporalities. The key objective
of this thesis is to explore how brands are involved in (re)organising the boundaries
between economy and society, allowing for a multiplication and continuation of value
production.
In an empirical exploration featuring two case studies on Dove’s Campaign for Real
Beauty and American Apparel, this thesis brings together social and digital research
methods in order to trace and map the distributed becoming of both brands. Attention is
directed to three key intersections: the embeddedness of brands in relations, the
distributed spatialisation of brands, and the role of bodies and sexuality as issue
deployed in branding practices. What a brand stands for, I argue, cannot be limited to
its strategic ‘making’, but is tied to its emergent and distributed ‘happening’.
Informed by my the fieldwork, I develop the claim that contemporary brands are
increasingly partible, as they are reliant on their constant re-appropriation by a variety
of actors and are therefore entangled in a ‘becoming topological’, as they are defined
through relations which can only be accounted for from the inside. Brands emerge as a
specific socio-economic form involved in what I call ‘continuous economies’, in which
economic value production increasingly arises from non-economic activities and
becomes inherently partible in social activities. Such continuous economies are being
animated by the brands’ capacity to create multi-valence, in which consumer activities
are at the same time social, cultural and economic acts. Continuity, in this context,
addresses a specific mode of boundary making, one that brings together brands and
consumers without dissolving them into each other but that maintains a specific
imbalance and asymmetry between them. Brands do not, as suggested by some
sociological critique, merely subsume social activities into exploitative labour, but
enable the organisation of continuity and discontinuity between the social and the
economic in immanent ways, while at the same time displacing value production
temporally and pre-structuring its potential futures.
their increasing investment in consumer involvement, participation and co-creation.
Revisiting the role of brands in contemporary capitalism, it shows that brands are not
discrete, purely economic entities, but emerge in relations to multiple actors and are
distributed across a series of spaces, societal issues and temporalities. The key objective
of this thesis is to explore how brands are involved in (re)organising the boundaries
between economy and society, allowing for a multiplication and continuation of value
production.
In an empirical exploration featuring two case studies on Dove’s Campaign for Real
Beauty and American Apparel, this thesis brings together social and digital research
methods in order to trace and map the distributed becoming of both brands. Attention is
directed to three key intersections: the embeddedness of brands in relations, the
distributed spatialisation of brands, and the role of bodies and sexuality as issue
deployed in branding practices. What a brand stands for, I argue, cannot be limited to
its strategic ‘making’, but is tied to its emergent and distributed ‘happening’.
Informed by my the fieldwork, I develop the claim that contemporary brands are
increasingly partible, as they are reliant on their constant re-appropriation by a variety
of actors and are therefore entangled in a ‘becoming topological’, as they are defined
through relations which can only be accounted for from the inside. Brands emerge as a
specific socio-economic form involved in what I call ‘continuous economies’, in which
economic value production increasingly arises from non-economic activities and
becomes inherently partible in social activities. Such continuous economies are being
animated by the brands’ capacity to create multi-valence, in which consumer activities
are at the same time social, cultural and economic acts. Continuity, in this context,
addresses a specific mode of boundary making, one that brings together brands and
consumers without dissolving them into each other but that maintains a specific
imbalance and asymmetry between them. Brands do not, as suggested by some
sociological critique, merely subsume social activities into exploitative labour, but
enable the organisation of continuity and discontinuity between the social and the
economic in immanent ways, while at the same time displacing value production
temporally and pre-structuring its potential futures.