Everyday Data Cultures

Author: Jean Burgess
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509547576
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 119

Book Description
The AI revolution can seem powerful and unstoppable, extracting data from every aspect of our lives and subjecting us to unprecedented surveillance and control. But at ground level, even the most advanced ‘smart’ technologies are not as all-powerful as either the tech companies or their critics would have us believe. From gig worker activism to wellness tracking with sex toys and TikTokers' manipulation of the algorithm, this book shows how ordinary people are negotiating the datafication of society. The book establishes a new theoretical framework for understanding everyday experiences of data and automation, and offers guidance on the ethical responsibilities we share as we learn to live together with data-driven machines. Everyday Data Cultures is essential reading for students and researchers in digital media and communication, as well as for anyone interested in the role of data and AI in society.

Everyday Adventures with Unruly Data

Author: Melanie Feinberg
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262371456
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Book Description
Paired informal and scholarly essays show how everyday events reveal fundamental concepts of data, including its creation, aggregation, management, and use. Whether questioning numbers on a scale, laughing at a misspelling of one’s name, or finding ourselves confused in a foreign supermarket, we are engaging with data. The only way to handle data responsibly, says Melanie Feinberg in this incisive work, is to take into account its human character. Though the data she discusses may seem familiar, close scrutiny shows it to be ambiguous, complicated, and uncertain: unruly. Drawing on the tools of information science, she uses everyday events such as deciding between Blender A and Blender B on Amazon to demonstrate a practical, critical, and generative mode of thinking about data: its creation, management, aggregation, and use. Each chapter pairs a self-contained main essay (an adventure) with a scholarly companion essay (the reflection). The adventure begins with an anecdote—visiting the library, running out of butter, cooking rice on a different stove. Feinberg argues that to understand the power and pitfalls of data science, we must attend to the data itself, not merely the algorithms that manipulate it. As she reflects on the implications of commonplace events, Feinberg explicates fundamental concepts of data that reveal the many tiny design decisions—which may not even seem like design at all—that shape how data comes to be. Through the themes of serendipity, objectivity, equivalence, interoperability, taxonomy, labels, and locality, she illuminates the surprisingly pervasive role of data in our daily thoughts and lives.

Algorithmic Culture

Author: Stefka Hristova
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1793635749
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Book Description
Algorithmic Culture: How Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are Transforming Everyday Life explores the complex ways in which algorithms and big data, or algorithmic culture, are simultaneously reshaping everyday culture while perpetuating inequality and intersectional discrimination. Contributors situate issues of humanity, identity, and culture in relation to free will, surveillance, capitalism, neoliberalism, consumerism, solipsism, and creativity, offering a critique of the myriad constraints enacted by algorithms. This book argues that consumers are undergoing an ontological overhaul due to the enhanced manipulability and increasingly mandatory nature of algorithms in the market, while also positing that algorithms may help navigate through chaos that is intrinsically present in the market democracy. Ultimately, Algorithmic Culture calls attention to the present-day cultural landscape as a whole as it has been reconfigured and re-presented by algorithms.

The Datafied Society

Author: Mirko Tobias Schäfer
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789462981362
Category : Big data
Languages : en
Pages : 267

Book Description
The ability to gather data that can be crunched by machines is valuable for studying society. The new methods needed to work it require new skills and new ways of thinking about best research practices. This book reflects on the role and usefulness of big data, challenging overly optimistic expectations about what it can reveal, introducing practices and methods for its analysis and visualization, and raising important political and ethical questions regarding its collection, handling, and presentation.

Cultural Analytics

Author: Lev Manovich
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262360632
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 332

Book Description
A book at the intersection of data science and media studies, presenting concepts and methods for computational analysis of cultural data. How can we see a billion images? What analytical methods can we bring to bear on the astonishing scale of digital culture--the billions of photographs shared on social media every day, the hundreds of millions of songs created by twenty million musicians on Soundcloud, the content of four billion Pinterest boards? In Cultural Analytics, Lev Manovich presents concepts and methods for computational analysis of cultural data. Drawing on more than a decade of research and projects from his own lab, Manovich offers a gentle, nontechnical introduction to the core ideas of data analytics and discusses the ways that our society uses data and algorithms.

Understanding Data, Culture and Society

Author: Pieter Verdegem
Publisher: SAGE Publications Limited
ISBN: 1529700132
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
- How is data shaping our identities? - What was the ′data revolution′, and how did it happen? - How will AI change our societies? We live in the age of datafication: every aspect of our lives has been captured and transformed into data, from our sleeping patterns and step counts to our buying habits and political views. In this exciting new textbook, you will discover the intricate ways in which data and society are interwoven. Explaining key concepts such as ′big data′ and putting theory into practice throughout, this book will make you a better expert in data and society, offering an interdisciplinary overview of a rapidly evolving field. This textbook tackles the implications of big data for democracy, identity and the global economy, showing how we cannot view our lives as separate from the technologies we have come to rely on. With learning objectives, case studies, further reading and extra resources provided in each chapter, this book is the ideal companion for students in the digital humanities and social sciences looking to deepen their understanding of data, culture and society.

Intersectionality

Author: Patricia Hill Collins
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745684521
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289

Book Description
The concept of intersectionality has become a hot topic in academic and activist circles alike. But what exactly does it mean, and why has it emerged as such a vital lens through which to explore how social inequalities of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability and ethnicity shape one another? In this new book Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge provide a much-needed, introduction to the field of intersectional knowledge and praxis. They analyze the emergence, growth and contours of the concept and show how intersectional frameworks speak to topics as diverse as human rights, neoliberalism, identity politics, immigration, hip hop, global social protest, diversity, digital media, Black feminism in Brazil, violence and World Cup soccer. Accessibly written and drawing on a plethora of lively examples to illustrate its arguments, the book highlights intersectionality's potential for understanding inequality and bringing about social justice oriented change. Intersectionality will be an invaluable resource for anyone grappling with the main ideas, debates and new directions in this field.

Data Culture

Author: Shorful Islam
Publisher: Kogan Page Publishers
ISBN: 1398614211
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 233

Book Description
Organizations often start their data journey by either procuring the technology or hiring the people. However, without an effective data-driven culture in place, they can struggle to derive value from their investments. Data Culture explores how data leaders can develop and nurture a data-driven culture tailored to their organization's needs. It outlines the types of data leadership and teams needed and the key building blocks for success, such as team recruitment, building and training, leadership, process, behavioural change management, developing, sustaining and measuring a data culture, company values and everyday decision making. It also explores the nuances of how different types of data cultures work with different types of companies, what to avoid and the differences between building a data culture from scratch and changing an existing data culture from within. With this hands-on guide, senior data leader Shorful Islam takes readers through how to successfully establish or change a data culture, sharing his expertise in behavioural change psychology and two decades of experience in fostering data culture in organizations. Supported throughout by real-world examples and cases, this will be an essential read for all data leaders and anyone involved in developing a data-driven organizational culture.

The Drama of Social Life

Author: Jeffrey C. Alexander
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509518142
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 180

Book Description
In this book Jeffrey Alexander develops the view that cultural sociology and “cultural pragmatics” are vital for understanding the structural turbulence and political possibilities of contemporary social life. Central to Alexander’s approach is a new model of social performance that combines elements from both the theatrical avant-garde and modern social theory. He uses this model to shed new light on a wide range of social actors, movements, and events, demonstrating through striking empirical examples the drama of social life. Producing successful dramas determines the outcome of social movements and provides the keys to political power. Modernity has neither eliminated aura nor suppressed authenticity; on the contrary, they are available to social actors who can perform them in compelling ways. This volume further consolidates Alexander’s reputation as one of the most original social thinkers of our time. It will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology and cultural studies as well as throughout the social sciences and humanities.

Data Power in Action

Author: Ola Söderström
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529233569
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Book Description
EPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Drawing on the study of different cities in the Global South, this book explores how the intensive use of data changes politics, power relations, and everyday life in contemporary cities. Across the volume, expert contributors show how urban actors, from the state to activists, are increasingly using data as a resource to empower their actions and support their claims, while also demonstrating how times of crisis are moments when the power of data is made visible. Focusing on the different dimensions of data power and politics in the urban realm, this is an important contribution to our understanding of how datafication transforms the places in which we live and how we experience them.