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3rd Seminar. Big Data and the power of narrative

Symposium on 21-22 March 2019 on what ethnography stands to gain from embracing the data abundance and what big data analytics could learn from ethnography.

Info about event

Time

Thursday 21 March 2019, at 10:30 - Friday 22 March 2019, at 16:00

Location

IT University of Copenhagen, Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen S

Key note speakers:

  • Joe Dumit, University of California, Davis
  • Minna Ruckenstein, University of Helsinki
  • Evelyn Ruppert, Goldsmiths

Description

The promise of big data is sweeping across the sciences, and the everyday practices that are the object of anthropology are increasingly leaving data traces. Scholars talk about a ‘datafication’ of social life and see in the digitalization new ways of predicting behaviour and understanding sociality. A range of technologies are involved in the datafication of everyday life operating to a large extent through the internet of things, AI, the interconnected devices monitoring and regulating everything from our health to finances and reputation, to our energy use, transport, and the food chain infrastructures that sustain our lives. How might we understand the implications of this datafication of everyday life? How might we explore the emerging political and economic contours? How does datafication influence what counts as true and worth knowing? Can anthropology and adjacent fields have a special role in providing narratives about the things that escape datafication?

In this symposium we invite ethnographers to explore these questions and reflect on what ethnography stood to gain from embracing the data abundance and what big data analytics could learn from ethnography.

Final program and all parallel sessions. Big Data and the power of narrative

 

Papers 

We welcome papers that address the seminar theme.

Abstract deadline:

January 10, 2019, 100-200 words to be sent to
Lea Enslev: leen@itu.dk

Notification of paper acceptance:

February 2019

Participation & Registration

Participation is free and coffee and lunch will be provided during the two-day event.

Organizers:

Brit Ross Winthereik, IT University of Copenhagen,
Klaus Hoeyer, University of Copenhagen,
Maja Hojer Bruun, Aalborg University

THE SEMINAR IS SPONSORED BY INDEPENDENT RESEARCH FUND DENMARK, ERC, AND THE VELUX FOUNDATION.