scholarly journals After Big Data Failed: The Enduring Allure of Numbers in the Wake of the 2016 US Election

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanni Loukissas ◽  
Anne Pollock
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Sense Making ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
The Prestige

When widespread polling failed to accurately predict the 2016 US presidential election, producers and consumers of data didn’t abandon faith in numbers. Instead, they have reconfigured their relationships with big data. Producers are formulating redemption narratives, blaming specific datasets or poor interpretation, and the broader reception looks similar. Seeking an explanation for Trump’s unexpected victory, news audiences are calling out failed pre-election polling numbers, while at the same time embracing empirically dubious exit polls. This Critical Engagement piece argues that Science and Technology Studies scholarship has prepared us to see that polling errors would not undo the prestige and power of quantitative methods, but rather reveal the intensity of our attachment to data as a readily available arbiter. We show that data’s ambivalent qualities make it a durable ground for claims-making, with the capacity to be mobilized to do different kinds of work: blame, exoneration, and broader sense-making.

scholarly journals Reimagining the Big Data assemblage

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205395171881819 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Carter
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Data Analytics ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Big Data Analytics ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
New Ways Of Working ◽  
Considerable Success

Recent work on Big Data and analytics reveals a tension between analyzing the role of emerging objects and processes in existing systems and using those same objects and processes to create new and purposeful forms of action. While the field of science and technology studies has had considerable success in pursuing the former goal, as Halford and Savage argue, there is an ongoing need to discover or invent ways to “do Big Data analytics differently.” In this commentary, I suggest that attempts to produce new ways of working with Big Data and analytics might be hindered by how science and technology studies-influenced scholars have conceptualized assemblages. While these scholars have foregrounded objects’ relations within existing assemblages, new materialist philosophers draw attention to properties of objects that transcend those relations and might indicate opportunities for more creative or generative uses of Big Data and analytics.

scholarly journals STS as a Program of Ontological Disobedience: Koichi Mikami Talks with Steve Woolgar

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koichi Mikami ◽  
Steve Woolgar
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Critical Engagement ◽  
Distinguished Career

Is science and technology studies (STS) a luxury that our society cannot afford anymore? In this interview, Koichi Mikami tries to learn lessons from Steve Woolgar’s distinguished career on how the kind of sensibilities treasured within the field of STS and the type of critical engagement that its researchers aspire to might be best exercised in a changing landscape of higher education and academic research. Woolgar explains how he, at some key moments in his career, managed to create “a room” for reflexive thought and critical engagement in domains that could otherwise have been dominated by simple deterministic discourses. He explains that the questions of how and to whom you sell your criticism deserve as much attention as what your criticism is. A reflection by Koichi Mikami follows the interview.

scholarly journals Theoretical Bases of Critical Data Studies

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (1A(115A)) ◽  
pp. 96-109
Author(s):  
Łukasz Iwasiński
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Critical Data ◽  
Intellectual Context ◽  
Philosophy Of Knowledge

Purpose/Thesis: The paper presents main premises and analyzes the theoretical bases of critical data studies (CDS). Approach/Methods: The article uses critical review of the literature on CDS, social aspects of big data, sociology of knowledge, philosophy of knowledge and science and technology studies. Results and conclusions: Author identifies three main theoretical premises of CDS: (1) A critique of market-oriented instrumental rationality; (2) Rejection of the idea that data is independent from the research process; (3) Rejection of the concept of raw data. Article discusses intellectual roots of CDS. It is argued that CDS derive from constructivist sociology of knowledge, and science and technology studies. Originality/Value: The article brings together theoretical literature and empirical studies from diverse disciplinary fields to examine theoretical bases of CDS and situates it in its intellectual context. It stresses the need of critical view of data and data processing, which is especially important in the big data area. CDS are recognized in cultural studies and media studies (however poorly discussed in related Polish scholarship), but they remain almost absent in Information Studies, which would benefit from it.

scholarly journals Enacting Environments: An Ethnography of the Digitalisation and Naturalisation of Emissions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingmar Lippert
Keyword(s):  
Big Data ◽  
Social Studies ◽  
Carbon Footprint ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Multinational Company ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Phd Thesis

The PhD thesis and its related publications address how a carbon footprint of a multinational company was enacted. Related publications draw out a range of implications of this analysis for, inter alia, the sociology of the environment, Science and Technology Studies (STS), social studies of Big Data, the sociology of numbers and quantification.

scholarly journals Trois regards sur la notion de « culture chinoise »

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-116
Author(s):  
Basile Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Chinese Culture ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Historical Overview ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Interactional Expertise ◽  
General Argument ◽  
Technology Studies ◽  
Chinese Studies

Abstract Chinese studies are going through a period of reforms. This article appraises what could constitute the theoretical and methodological foundations of contemporary sinology today. The author suggests an approach of “Chinese culture” by drawing from recent frameworks of Science and Technology Studies (STS). The paper starts with current debates in Asian studies, followed by a historical overview of the concept of culture in anthropology. Then, two short case studies are presented with regard to two different STS approaches: studies of expertise and experience and the notion of interactional expertise, and the framework of waves and forms. A general argument is thereby sketched which suggests how “Chinese culture” can be understood from the perspective of materiality.

Queere Praktiken der Reproduktion

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Charlotte Dionisius
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Technology Studies

Ein, zwei, drei oder vier Elternteile, »Sponkel«, »Mapas« und lesbische Zeugungsakte - wer oder was Familie ist und wie sie gegründet wird, hat sich vervielfältigt. Sarah Charlotte Dionisius rekonstruiert aus einer von den Feminist Science and Technology Studies inspirierten, queertheoretischen Perspektive, wie lesbische und queere Frauen*paare, die mittels Samenspende Eltern geworden sind, Familie, Verwandtschaft und Geschlecht imaginieren und praktizieren. Damit wirft sie einen heteronormativitätskritischen Blick auf die sozialwissenschaftliche Familienforschung sowie auf gesellschaftliche und rechtliche Entwicklungen, die neue Ein- und Ausschlüsse queerer familialer Lebensweisen mit sich bringen.

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