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 seeks 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. We welcome conceptual, methodological, and empirical contributions that seek to broaden the accessibility of digital methods training and tools, including reflections on methodological boundaries, questions of expertise, and the politics of digital knowledge production.
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.
The workshop is designed as a three-hour online-only gathering (with breaks), celebrating the 5th anniversary of the Centre for Digital Methods and Media at Aarhus University. The contributions of the workshop shall be published open access as a concise and practice-oriented white paper under the Centre’s publication series soon after the workshop.
The workshop will take place on 13 November 2026, 9-12 (CET) on Zoom. Participation will be limited to registered participants only. Please send your idea for a contribution to Christoph Raetzsch (craetzsch [AT] cc.au.dk) by 15 October 2026 (AOE). We will communicate the programme and sign-up options by 20 October.
