Human Data Interaction, Disadvantage and Skills in the Community


Book Description

The book provides a dynamic, cross-sectional, multidisciplinary perspective and dialogue to illuminate the challenges humans face in their interactions with data in their individual postdigital contexts in local communities. It offers unique insights from real cases, collaborations, and projects to extend existing academic theories and frameworks, applied to human data interactions, disadvantage, and digital skills. The book takes the novel approach of establishing co-authorship between cross-sector practitioners from the wider community (such as local authorities, councils, policy makers, small businesses, charities, education and skills providers, and other stakeholders) with international academics and researchers who write about humans, digital skills, and data. This develops an enabling cross-sector environment throughout the book that not only furthers broader understandings concerning data, disadvantage and digital skills in postdigital society, but also shares a template to support others who may wish to adopt this approach to co-authorship and knowledge exchange. The book revisits the Human Data Interaction (HDI) framework (Mortier, Haddadi, Henderson, McAuley, and Crowcroft 2014) through many diverse cross-sectoral perspectives. These are co-authored under the HDI framework’s key tenets of: agency, legibility, negotiability and resistance. These tenets form the main sections of the book, with chapters examining these concepts through both interdisciplinary academic literature and cross-sector dialogue with individuals and agencies from the wider community who work with diverse and often disadvantaged groups.




Bioinformational Philosophy and Postdigital Knowledge Ecologies


Book Description

The book presents a cross-disciplinary overview of critical issues at the intersections of biology, information, and society. Based on theories of bioinformationalism, viral modernity, the postdigital condition, and others, this book explores two inter-related questions: Which new knowledge ecologies are emerging? Which philosophies and research approaches do they require? The book argues that the 20th century focus on machinery needs to be replaced, at least partially, by a focus on a better understanding of living systems and their interactions with technology at all scales – from viruses, through to human beings, to the Earth’s ecosystem. This change of direction cannot be made by a simple relocation of focus and/or funding from one discipline to another. In our age of the Anthropocene, (human and planetary) biology cannot be thought of without (digital) technology and society. Today’s curious bioinformational mix of blurred and messy relationships between physics and biology, old and new media, humanism and posthumanism, knowledge capitalism and bio-informational capitalism defines the postdigital condition and creates new knowledge ecologies. The book presents scholarly research defining new knowledge ecologies built upon emerging forms of scientific communication, big data deluge, and opacity of algorithmic operations. Many of these developments can be approached using the concept of viral modernity, which applies to viral technologies, codes and ecosystems in information, publishing, education, and emerging knowledge (journal) systems. It is within these overlapping theories and contexts, that this book explores new bioinformational philosophies and postdigital knowledge ecologies.




Postdigital Participation in Education


Book Description

This open access book examines the interrelations and correlations of the postdigital condition and its relationship to education, with a particular focus on participation. Contributions reflect on how educational institutions are affected by the recent transformations of media technologies and practices, and how at the same time institutions such as schools and universities are supposed to enable people to participate in media practices in an informed and reflective way. How, and under what conditions, can teachers and students participate in contemporary media constellations? The book will be of interest to academics and researchers involved in teacher education, digital pedagogy, educational technology, instructional design, education philosophy and media education.




Digital Learning in Higher Education


Book Description

Mapping the uncertain landscape of education in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Digital Learning in Higher Education examines how Higher Education (HE) institutions have moved to widespread digital learning in an effort to maintain the educational experience. The book navigates the possibilities that lie ahead, using reflections from HE practitioners and other academic professionals to explore the beginnings of a new and brighter future for HE.




Sustainable Networked Learning


Book Description

This book provides cutting-edge research on networked learning, focusing on issues of sustainability in design for learning, data use, and networked learning connections. It contributes novel theoretical perspectives on networked learning, its role in society and potential for sustainable learning design. It further contributes a set of exemplary empirical cases - exemplary in terms of their innovative learning designs, pedagogical use of technology in connecting learners, and/or critical reflections on implications of utilizing different technologies to support learning. The book is organized into four main sections: 1) Data and datafication, 2) Sustainable learning design, 3) Sociological perspectives on Networked Learning, and 4) Networked learning in times of lockdown. Concluding the book is a final chapter which points to emerging issues within the field of networked learning, based on discussion of perspectives from the chapters The book's focus on the nature of learning and technology-mediated interactions makes it of prime significance to researchers and practitioners in the field of technology-supported teaching and learning.




Digital Media Metaphors


Book Description

Bringing together leading scholars from media studies and digital sociology, this edited volume provides a comprehensive introduction to digital media metaphors, unpacking their power and limitations. Digital technologies have reshaped our way of life. To grasp their dynamics and implications, people often rely on metaphors to provide a shared frame of reference. Scholars, journalists, tech companies, and policymakers alike speak of digital clouds, bubbles, frontiers, platforms, trolls, and rabbit holes. Some of these metaphors distort the workings of the digital realm and neglect key consequences. This collection, structured in three parts, explores metaphors across digital infrastructures, content, and users. Within these parts, each chapter examines a specific metaphor that has become near-ubiquitous in public debate. Doing so, the book engages not only with the technological, but also the social, political, and environmental implications of digital technologies and relations. This unique collection will interest students and scholars of digital media and the broader fields of media and communication studies, sociology, and science and technology studies.







Constructing Postdigital Research


Book Description

This book delves into the various methods of constructing postdigital research, with a particular focus on the postdigital dynamic of inclusion and exclusion, as well as the interplay between method and emancipation. By answering three fundamental questions - the relationship between postdigital theory and research practice, the relationship between method and emancipation, and how to construct emancipatory postdigital research - the book serves as a comprehensive resource for those interested in conducting postdigital research. Constructing Postdigital Research: Method and Emancipation is complemented by Postdigital Research: Genealogies, Challenges, and Future Perspectives, also edited by Petar Jandrić, Alison MacKenzie, and Jeremy Knox, which explores these questions in theory.




Postdigital Research


Book Description

This book explores genealogies and the challenges related to the concept of the postdigital, the ambiguous nature of postdigital knowledges, and the many faces of postdigital sensibilities. The book answers three key questions: What is postdigital knowledge? What does it mean to do postdigital research? What, if anything, is distinct from research conducted in other perspectives? As such, this book is a one-stop publication for those interested in the theory of postdigital research. Postdigital Research: Genealogies, Challenges, and Future Perspectives is complemented by Constructing Postdigital Research: Method and Emancipation, also edited by Petar Jandrić, Alison MacKenzie, and Jeremy Knox, which explores these questions in practice.




Researching the ‘New Normal’ Social World


Book Description

This edited volume focuses on the changing research methodologies in social science research, prompted by the new social world shaped by the pandemic. It explores adaptations and developments to meet the demands of transforming social circumstances and showcases innovative alternative approaches. Featuring a range of international and interdisciplinary contributors who discuss the context of social science research in the "new normal", the book sets out the need to redesign research to address present-day challenges for the post-pandemic. Chapters share methodological innovations and demonstrate how applicable these new and adapted methodologies are to a world post-pandemic, discussing a wide range of innovative, digital-first research methods with practical analysis. The role of technology and its application in social science research during this transition is explored in particular, alongside new approaches to quantitative and qualitative research that feature innovations in ethnography, online data collection, and ethical protocols for research. Ultimately offering a comprehensive exploration of adaptive and innovative social science research methodologies suited to the current social context, the book will be relevant to researchers, academics, and scholars in the fields of research methods, research technologies, and the sociology of education.