Mapping the production of controversial knowledge on Wikipedia
2011-David Moats
My research concerns how controversy spreads on the internet and how "truth" is constructed on interactive online forums - focusing on the process by which provisional and unstable knowledge on online news sites, blogs and social media becomes consolidated and "black boxed" on Wikipedia over time. I am using a combination of large scale mapping techniques developed through Mapping Controversies in conjunction with online ethnography informed by the study of scientific controversy in Science and Technology Studies. I am interested in the politics of knowledge production: whose version of events comes to dominate, and whose version is suppressed or marginalised. What strategies do scientists, journalists, PR companies and members of the public use to advance certain knowledge. I am also interested in how binaries like mainstream/fringe, consensus/conspiracy, objectivity/bias as well as notions of "the public" are produced through these debates and particular internet devices.
The Politics of Database or How Memory Turned into Action
2004-
The aim of this research project is to examine the database in the context of a new mode of knowledge production. Suggesting that knowledge institutions as well as memory institutions are increasingly operating under a new knowledge paradigm that demands access and application, interoperability and transdisciplinarity, integration and technological transfer, this research examines the relations between new forms of database and new rationales of knowledge production and governance focusing on notions of agency, citizenship, creativity and innovation.
The project is a comparative one and will concentrate on a series of key national and international initiatives that seek to consolidate disciplinary developments in culture, science and government by means of creating a common knowledge and information environment. Initiatives that are founded upon and/or promote a database logic include the JISC (Joint Information Service Committee), MINERVA (Ministerial Network for Valorising Activities in digitisation), and Directgov, will be analysed in terms of a number of common themes. In framing them as hybrid actors that cross disciplinary borders I intend to unfold common ambitions and strategies as well as map their achievements in establishing new regulatory frameworks for the handling of knowledge and information. In turn this comparative analysis of the logic of the contemporary database will form the basis of a broader analysis of their place within new modes of knowledge production.
Through delineating a database logic my research aims to address questions regarding the changing role of knowledge and the form of the new mode of knowledge production. These include claims that we are living in an era of greater reflexivity, interdisciplinarity, and accountability. This research attempts to frame and test these assumptions through the definition, and application of a database logic to more general developments within the nature of government.
Creative Processes: An Ethnographic Study of Innovation, Art, and Business
This thesis examines the practice of innovation from a sociological perspective. It asks how artistic transformation is translated into a strategy for innovation. Following Barry’s definition of innovation as introducing novelty into a particular domain and transforming the being of this domain (2008:26), I investigate the ways in which these practices lay claim to a particular form of ontological change by asking: how do these artistic practices subvert their discipline, field or industry? Accordingly, I take experimental filmmaking and design methods as practical examples of such ontological transformations. At a practical level, I ask how these practices function and what they produce. To investigate these questions, I take two prime empirical strategies. First, I follow the techniques and methods by which the concept of innovation is enacted within various artistic practices. Second, I examine how, in practice, these ideas are translated into management principles guiding the process of innovation.
As such, I present an ethnographic study of two artistic practices. First I investigate the artistic idea of ‘dogma’, referring to the dogma filmmaking movement, as it was deployed in an event organised by a small-scale Danish consultancy firm. In the second study, I explore the idea of ‘critical design’ as it was deployed in a design brief organised by a London-based design studio. In this way, I consider artistic ideas as enacted in specific events and how these variously draw upon aesthetic perspectives, economic realities and technological futures. As such, this thesis is an empirical contribution to innovation studies, investigating how innovation is invoked in various art practices operationalizing new forms of capitalism where creativity is said to play an ever-increasing role.
This research project is funded by the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation as an international collaboration between the Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School and Department of Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London.
An ethnographic study of museum co-curation
2010 - ...
This is a study of an experiment taking place in a national museum which seeks to involve lay persons in the curation process, called co-curation. This research will study a series of co-curation experiments ethnographically and in doing so will seek to better understand both the nature of the museum and its publics.
Through ethnographic research, the study will document the ways in which co-curation is achieved within a variety of different projects. The ethnographic research will focus on the ways in which participants in co-curations engage, and are engaged, with the objects in the museum's collections and the way in which the process of exhibiting is negotiated. The ethnography will also feature a participatory dimension as I join a group of laptop musicians to co-curate an exhibition based on the life and work of electronic sound pioneer Daphne Oram.
Theoretically, the research will ask in what sense these co-curations constitute an experiment by the museum. The study will explore how these co-curation experiments might relate and potentially challenge the museum's concern with history and focus on conservation and archiving. Through my own participation in the co-curation process I intend to explore in the ways in which what is produced and exhibited might also be thought of as a research output. More broadly, the study will draw on science technology studies literature to situate these co-curation experiments with contemporary debates about science and democracy.
Children Living with HIV
2008- ...
Despite consisting of some substantial issues, the difficulties for
children living with HIV is under explored in sociological studies of HIV.
The development of studying HIV has focused on adults with the disease
and behavioural aspects in combating the disease (such as the prevention
of the disease through safe sex procedures and cleaning needles), leaving
the considerations of living with the disease – especially for children –
a sideline to sociological HIV studies. Moralistic or adult-centric
notions of HIV do not fit well with notions of childhood, or the family,
which is instead popularly seen as a time of innocence. As a consequence,
children with HIV tend to be overlooked or sensationalised.
In contrast many significant child specific sociological considerations of
HIV exist. Such as how are antiretroviral drugs (ARV) organised into the
everyday lives of sufferers? How do ARVs make their condition visible to
themselves and others? What kinds of issues are responsible for certain
families adhering or not adhering to ARVs? How are children made
knowledgeable about their condition? All of these considerations have a
bearing on the way that paediatric HIV is dealt with.
This project aims to consider how these issues of childhood HIV, medicine
and medical procedures are organised according to the lives of sufferers.
Methodologically, the study is being undertaken using concepts developed
in science, technology and society studies (STS), and the Sociology of
Childhood, which is being used to contrast and complement the use of STS.
The research is being conducted at North Middlesex University Hospital
(NMUH) and focuses upon children between the ages of 8 to 17. The approach
adopts an ethnomethodological approach to observe doctor patient
consultations. This will provide data on the interactions between
children and professionals and show a part of the process between medicine
the HIV and children are ordered together.
Technologies of Life and the Future of Humanism: Information Paradigm and Linguistic Turn in Sociological Theory
2006-2010
Aecio Amaral Jr.
Project sponsored by CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnologico (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development), Brazil
This research proposal aims to approach a social and historical configuration, which emerged after the post Second War, in which the constitution and government of life has come to operate through molecular and informational matrices. The convergence of the Life and Information sciences seems to summarise the formula specific to this historical configuration: the refraction of life by information. This convergence maintains the non-restricted organic domain as a material resource, presenting a horizon for the exercise of biopower in an unprecedented manner in modernity, and extending beyond Foucault's studies about disciplinary societies, and the even more recent writings by Giorgio Agamben on "la nuda vita". The technical disposal of nature and human beings, as well as the alleged non-differentiation between human and non-human, made possible by technoscience, undermines at least two of the basic pillars of modern humanism: the civilising distinction between human and non-human - this is between human and animal, vegetable, and technical realms; and the rhetorical separation between science and politics. This work is an attempt to focus on the possible ways the informational paradigm and its coexistive genetic culture, which underlies such a set of phenomena, had differentially influenced social sciences discourse during the late 20th century. A range of issues will be approached, all of them concerning the controversial and multidimensional relationship between social sciences and cybernetics, such as the dialogue between Levi-Strauss and Roman Jakobson; the debate between communicative reason and system theory; Gilles Deleuze and the so-called "body without organs"; Francois Lyotard's engagement with "the inhuman"; and Habermas' recent recognition of the decline of discourse ethics face to biotechnologies, etc.