FLIPPED | Digital Experiments in the Making I: Epistemological And Ethical Considerations

Abstract

When designing and re-inventing digital infrastructures and reflecting their role, epistemological as well as ethical considerations frame the experiments conducted. What are the digital modes of knowledge production in STS? What kind of agencies do code, platforms and tools have within this settings? How can we reflect the emerging sociotechnical research infrastructures within our methodological and analytic perspectives?
The session focusses on epistemological and ethical considerations regarding digital STS. Therefore, the main scope is to reflect on the trading zones emerging, to draw connections between digital infrastructures and researchers as well as between code and materiality. Ethical considerations on digital experiments and the related data as well as the power relations embedded within play a central role in analysing the changing scope of STS research.

This is a flipped session, where we focus on discussion. All presentations are available at the STS Infrastructures platform: https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/open-panel-easst4s-2020-digital-experiments-making/essay

Chair

• Gertraud Koch, University of Hamburg

Individual Presentations

• Life In The Trading Zone Of Digital STS - Torben Elgaard Jensen, Aalborg University Copenhagen; Anders Kristian Munk, Aalborg University

• Code Ethnography And The Materiality Of Power In Digital Communication Infrastructures - Fernanda R. Rosa, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania

• Transforming Code Into Voice: Toward A Material Semiotic Critical Code Studies Of Weizenbaum’s ELIZA Program - Jamie Steele, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Session Organizers

• Lina Franken, University of Hamburg

• Kim Fortun, University of California Irvine

• Mike Fortun, University of California, Irvine

• Gertraud Koch, University of Hamburg