CDMM Workshop Democratising Digital Methods
Online - after the deadline you will receive an email with Zoom information.
Digital methods have become widely adopted as a distinctive approach for studying online cultures, platforms, and infrastructures. Using ‘natively digital’ methods, objects and resources of digital media, researchers have developed a broad range of innovative ways of analysing hyperlinks, search engines, social media, platform data, and digital traces. Today, however, the landscape of digital methods is changing and undergoing significant transformations. The pluralisation and sophistication of the field itself, the rapid integration of artificial intelligence in research, and the broader user groups of digital methods approaches raise new questions about how digital methods can remain distinct and accessible. New approaches such as vibe-coding new tools, quali-quantitative methods for visual and cross-platform content, or new participatory methodologies expand the digital methods research toolbox and areas of application.
With this half-day workshop the Centre for Digital Methods and Media (CDMM) at Aarhus University is celebrating its 5th anniversary. We want to interrogate and map the democratising potential of digital methods approaches to investigate digital online cultures, infrastructures and discourses. We are especially interested in engaging with developers and researchers, journalists and civic technologists who un-blackbox digital media, support critical engagement through digital methods, and create new resources or pedagogies. Join us in rethinking how digital methods can be democratised, who can profit from them, how we can develop tools, resources and approaches together that are committed to open and critical investigations of digital media in an age of AI proliferation.
Programme
9:00-09:15: Welcome and Scoping (Christoph Raetzsch, AU)
9:15-10:00
- Sercan Kiyak (KU Leuven, BE). Democratising digital methods through shared research infrastructures. The iCANDID core facility at KU Leuven
- Sebastian Randerath (University of Bonn, DE). “Lost and Found. Infrastructures of Online Self-Learning Units on Digital Methods”
- Alexei Tsinovoi (Aarhus University, DK). Developing critical proximity in language model-based digital methods
10:00-10:15: break
10:15-11:15
- Samaneh Koohestani Soorchani (UC Louvain, BE): “Studying Micro-Celebrity Culture in Restricted Digital Environments”
- Lukas Lautenschlager (Aarhus University, DK) “Vibecoding the Youtube Playlist Surfer”
- Marilou Polymeropoulou (University of Oxford, UK) “Using Vibe Coding as an Assistive Method for Data Collection via Spotify’s API”
- Discussion: Potentials of AI-powered and creative methods and tools
11:15-11:30: break
- Closing joint discussion. Plan for proceedings in CDMM white paper