[Air-L] Post-truth Empiricism - call for the DMI Winter School Amsterdam

Wed Sep 26 05:23:19 PDT 2018

Dear all,

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI) will host its annual Digital
Methods Winter
School from January 7-11, 2019 at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Below please find the call for participation.

This year’s theme is: "Post-truth Empiricism: On the new epistemologies and
research affordances of social media". The deadline for application is
November 26, 2018. More information is available at
https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool2019 or winterschool@
digitalmethods.net.

Best regards,

Esther

-------
Post-truth Empiricism: On the new epistemologies and research affordances
of social media

*Digital Methods Winter School and Data Sprint 2019*
*7–11 January 2019*

*https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool2019
<https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/WinterSchool2019>*

*Everyday location*
Digital Methods Initiative
University of Amsterdam
Media Studies
Turfdraagsterpad 9
1012 XT Amsterdam
the Netherlands

The Digital Methods Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, is holding its annual
Winter School on 'Post-truth empiricism: On the new epistemologies and
research affordances of social media.' The format is that of a (social
media and web) data sprint, with tutorials as well as hands-on work for
telling stories with data. There is a programme of keynote speakers as well
as a book launch with the authors of 'Spotify Teardown’ (MIT Press, 2018,
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/spotify-teardown). It is intended for
advanced Master's students, PhD candidates and motivated scholars who would
like to work on (and complete) a digital methods project in an intensive
workshop setting.

Nearing two years on from the scandal of fake news, web epistemology has
changed irrevocably. Social media platforms have been revealed as primary
vectors for rumour-mongering and conspiracy theory, and Facebook in
particular (and Instagram before it) are shutting down access to data
(through APIs) or deleting it, without committing it to public archives. As
researchers we are compelled to rethink how we study these platforms. One
conceptual response, the post-digital, became a forceful rejoinder to any
naiveté about ‘new media’ and its playful study, left over after the
Snowden revelations of widespread digital surveillance by governmental
agencies. Another response, post-truth, concerns the new state of
epistemological affairs online, a realisation that ‘we can’t have our facts
back,’ as Noortje Marres phrased it, for social media — not to mention much
of the non-editorial web that preceded it — are ’truthless’ media. The web
has long been conceived of as a medium of ill repute, populated by pirates,
pornographers and self-publishers, later to be cleaned up by folksonomy and
sifted through by the wisdom of the crowd. Where are those mass editing
publics these days? Have they really been replaced by small fact-checking
bureaus?

This year’s Winter School is dedicated to the broad post-truth problematic,
not only conceptually but empirically. How are online media being
adjudicated? Previous work has examined genres of misinformation, their
spread as well as detection, comparing them across platforms. Conspiracy
(complicated emplotments) was found to flourish on the web, but well
detected on Facebook, but the opposite held for disinformation (hard facts
inverted). The ontological work of identifying and classifying post-truth
continues. One ‘so what’ question that persists since the beginning of the
post-truth period concerns whether these content consumers are persuaded.
Are they ‘communities of believers’ or ‘active filtering audiences’?
Another crucial question concerns the availability of online materials,
once considered ‘big data’ but now difficult to access without scraping or
other ill-gotten means. Are there materials, or perhaps remnants, still
available for study? At last year’s Winter School researchers built an
archive of the traces from some 88 Russian disinformation pages that had
been pushed onto other platforms, and are available for study. There are
homemade collections, some rather large. One is a Twitter archive put out
for public use by a US news agency. Facebook’s Social Science One project
also should be interrogated for the lengths researchers would go for
Facebook-sanctioned data (and what kinds of research may be performed with
it). Of interest as well are the relatively understudied platforms
such as YouTube’s
so-called dark intellectual web, the ‘manosphere’ in Reddit as well as
fringe platforms such as 4chan, gab, Voat, etc.
At the Winter School there are the usual social media tool tutorials (and
the occasional tool requiem), but also invitations for thinking through and
proposing how to work on web epistemology after the fake news debacle. New
tutorials include digital ethnography, data journalism and small data work,
plus a new variation on the walk-through method.

Applications: Key Dates The deadline for application is 26 November 2018.
To apply please enter on the secure website a letter of motivation, your CV
(including postal address), a headshot photo, 100-word bio as well as a
copy of your passport (details page only). Application should be made here:
http://bit.ly/DMI_APP. Alternatively you may send those materials along to
winterschool [at]digitalmethods.net. Notifications of acceptance will be
sent on 27 November. The full program and schedule of the Winter School are
available around 19 December 2018.

Tuition Fees, Accommodations & Other Logistics The fee for the Digital
Methods Winter School 2019 is EUR 595, and upon completion all participants
receive certificates (and 6 ECTS). To complete the Winter School
successfully all participants must co-present the final presentation and
co-author the final project report, evidenced by the presentation slides as
well as the final report itself. Bank transfer information is sent along
with the notification on 27 November 2018. Participants must pay the fee by
5 January 2019. Students at the University of Amsterdam do not pay fees.
Participants from LERU as well as U21 universities receive a tuition waiver
of EUR 500. Dutch universities in LERU and U21 unfortunately are unable to
receive the tuition waiver. The Winter School is self-catered. The venue is
in the center of Amsterdam with abundant coffee houses and lunch places.
Participants are expected to find their own housing (short-stay sites are
helpful), or we have available accommodations at the Student Hotel:
*The Student Hotel Amsterdam*
Jan van Galenstraat 335
1061 AZ Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Tel: +31 20 760 4000
(Arrival: 6 January 2019; Departure: 12 January 2019)
https://www.thestudenthotel.com/amsterdam-west
If you would like to have accommodations at the Student Hotel, please write
to the student hotel directly. To avoid disappointment, please write to
them as early as possible. Ask the hotel for the Digital Methods Winter
School discount.
The Winter School closes on Friday, 11 January, with a festive event, after
the final presentations. For further questions, please contact the local
organizers, Sal Hagen and Emilija Jokubauskaite, at winterschool [at]
digitalmethods.net.
Please bring your laptop computer, your European plug as well as the VGA /
HDMI adaptors for connecting to the projector.

About DMI The Digital Methods Winter School is part of the Digital Methods
Initiative (DMI), Amsterdam, dedicated to developing methods for
Internet-related research and the study of the natively digital. The
Digital Methods Initiative also holds annual Digital Methods Summer
Schools(twelve
to date), which are intensive and full-time, 2-week undertakings in the
Summertime. The next Summer School will take place from 1–12 July 2019.
The Digital Methods book (MIT Press, 2015,
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-methods) provides an introduction to
the methodological outlook that frames and informs the work of the DMI.
This is accompanied by a companion volume about mapping social and
political issues with digital methods: Issue Mapping for an Ageing
Europe (Amsterdam
University Press, 2015, http://bit.ly/issue_mapping), which is also freely
available on the web as an open access monograph. Further information and
resources about digital methods can be found at digitalmethods.net -
including links to projects, publications, tools, an introductory ‘founding
narrative’ about the Digital Methods Initiative as well as short bios of
affiliated researchers.
The coordinators of the Digital Methods Initiative are Dr. Sabine Niederer
(Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences) and Dr. Esther Weltevrede (New
Media & Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam), and the director is
Richard Rogers, Professor of New Media & Digital Culture, University of
Amsterdam.
http://www.digitalmethods.net/

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