[Air-L] Emotion and affect in datafied worlds - workshop in Helsinki, 1st of Nov

[Ruckenstein, Minna]

1st of November 2017, University of Helsinki, Finland

Feeling data: emotion and affect in datafied worlds - workshop

Scholars working in the interdisciplinary field of ‘critical data studies’ have begun to address the effects of ‘datafication’ - understood as the conversion of qualitative aspects of life into quantified data – on the economy, public life, and self-understanding. The workshop focuses on the emotional properties and affective forces of datafication with the intent of exploring how these perspectives could operate as a fruitful starting point for thinking about future societal trajectories in terms of datafied power, domination, and agency. The goal is to bring together scholars working with questions of the emotional and the affective with the intent of demonstrating how the two research streams could strengthen each other. With a focus on emotional dimensions of datafication, addressing emotional engineering, emotion tracking, and everyday engagements with data, the goal is to explore the communication of the emotional, but also the various kinds of agencies, both human and non-human, that the focus on the emotional can uncover. The exploration of the affective exposes atmospheres, temporalities, energies and rhythms involved in datafication and living with data. Together these research streams point towards the central role that forces such as the non-human, non-quantified, non-linear and non-cognitive play in datafication, raising questions about inequality, discrimination and data in/justice and how to overcome them.

Confirmed speakers: Helen Kennedy (University of Sheffield) and Deborah Lupton (University of Canberra)
 
The workshop addresses topics such as:
- emotional effects and consequences of data/fication
- affective dimensions of data/fication
- emotional responses to data/data visualisations/data materialisations
- affective atmospheres of data gathering devices, and services
- emotional topics and patterns uncovered in small/big data
- emotional engineering and emotion tracking
- sensory dimensions of data and data materialisations
- relationship between emotions, trust and truth in data/fication
 
 If you want to participate in the workshop, please submit a 300-word abstract and a short bio to minna.ruckenstein at helsinki.fi. 

Deadline for submissions is 8 of September 2017. 

The workshop is arranged by the Data, Self & Society group at the Consumer Society Research Centre, University of Helsinki and the Self-tracking and automatised bodies -network, funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond/The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences.