Qualitative and mixed methods digital social research often relies on gathering and storing social media data through the use of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). In past years this has been relatively simple, with academic developers and researchers using APIs to access data and produce visualisations and analysis of social networks and issues. In recent years, API access has become increasingly restricted and regulated by corporations at the helm of social media networks.Facebook (the corporation) has restricted academic research access to Facebook 2 (the social media platform) along with Instagram (a Facebook-owned social media platform). Instead, they have allowed access to sources where monetisation can easily occur, in particular, marketers and advertisers. This leaves academic researchers of digital social life in a difficult situation where API related research has been curtailed. In this paper we describe some rationales and methodologies for using APIs in social research. We then introduce some of the major events in academic API use that have led to the prohibitive situation researchers now find themselves in. Finally, we discuss the methodological and ethical issues this produces for researchers and, suggest some possible steps forward for API related research.

Techno-Anthropology is a new field, operating with a broad range of methodologies and approaches. This gives rise to the question: What does it mean for Techno-Anthropological research to be critical? In this paper, we discuss this question by developing and specifying the notion of ‘critical proximity.’ Critical proximity offers an alternative to critical distance, especially with respect to avoiding premature references to abstract panoramas such as democratization and capitalist exploitation in the quest to conduct ‘critical’ analysis. Critical proximity implies, instead, granting the beings, fields, and objects we study their own rights and abilities to problematize grand scale claims. Critical proximity further entails that we as researchers are implicated in issues and their formation in ways that allow us to register these critiques and methods, and to emphasize or supplement them. We work through two cases—one on the involvement of users in innovation projects and another on commercial web technologies for tracing issues—to show how critical proximity may be practiced. We sum up the lessons derived in four methodological guidelines for doing research with critical proximity.

As an increasing part of everyday life becomes connected with the web in many areas of the globe, the question of how the web mediates political processes becomes still more urgent. Several scholars have started to address this question by thinking about the web in terms of a public space. In this paper, we aim to make a twofold contribution towards the development of the concept of publics in web science. First, we propose that although the notion of publics raises a variety of issues, two major concerns continue to be user privacy and democratic citizenship on the web. Well-known arguments hold that the complex connectivity of the web puts user privacy at risk and enables the enclosure of public debate in virtual echo chambers. Our first argument is that these concerns are united by a set assumptions coming from liberal political philosophy that are rarely made explicit. As a second contribution, this paper points towards an alternative way to think about publics by proposing a pragmatist reorientation of the public/private distinction in web science, away from seeing two spheres that needs to be kept separate, towards seeing the public and the private as something that is continuously connected. The theoretical argument is illustrated by reference to a recently published case study of Facebook groups, and future research agendas for the study of web-mediated publics are proposed.

Vi argumenterer for, at falske nyheder skal forstås og undersøges empirisk i deres natur- lige habitat. Falske nyheder bør ikke blot håndteres som et spil whack-a-mole, hvor formålet er at slå det falske ned, hver gang det dukker op, som var det et muldvarpehoved i en spilleautomat, men derimod at forsøge at forstå de gange, muldvarpen graver.

Kontroversen om planerne for en betalingsring i København afstedkom blandt andet en række sider på Facebook. Eksemplet er ikke enestående: Sociale medier lægger i disse år ofte brugerflade til folkelige protester og kontroverser. Sociologien har med digitale metoder fået en række værktøjer til at indsamle data om dem. Flere af de digitale teknikker er formet af et teoretisk udgangspunkt hos Bruno Latour. Artiklen undersøger, hvilke metodiske retningslinjer der følger af en Latour-inspireret forståelse af politik og demokrati. Først afsøges Latours inspirationskilder i den amerikanske pragmatisme. Dernæst diskuteres Noortje Marres’ bud på konsekvenserne for digitale metoder. Endelig analyseres betalingsringskontroversen for at give et eksempel på en undersøgelse med digitale metoder, der tager udgangspunkt i idéen om demokratisk offentlighed som noget, der opstår i anledning af konkrete problematiske sager. Analysen bygger på 4.500 posts og kommentarer fra syv forskellige Facebook-sider om betalingsringen, der opsummeres i en co-wordvisualisering. Artiklen fremfører, at et Latour-inspireret fokus på sagsorienterede offentligheder tilbyder et interessant alternativ til affejende begreber som shitstorms og ekkokamre, og diskuterer de metodiske udfordringer, som tilgangen medfører for digitale metoder. ENGELSK ABSTRACT Andreas Birkbak: Shit storms, bubbles or issue publics? Digital methods and controversies on social media The controversy around plans to introduce congestion charges in Copenhagen included a number of protest pages on Facebook. This is not unique since social media are often used for popular protests these days. With the rise of digital methods, sociology has obtained a number of tools for collecting data about such protests. Several of the digital techniques are inspired by the work of Bruno Latour. This article investigates the methodological challenges that arise from a Latour-inspired understanding of politics and democracy. First, Latour’s inspiration from American pragmatism is explored. Next, Noortje Marres’s arguments about the consequences for digital methods are discussed. Finally, the congestion charge controversy is analyzed in order to provide an example of an inquiry with digital methods that is based on the idea that publics emerge in relation to problematic issues. The analysis is based on 4,500 posts and comments from seven different Facebook pages about the congestion charge controversy. The article argues that a Latour-inspired focus on issue-oriented publics offers an interesting alternative to sweeping concepts like shit storms and echo chambers, and explores the methodological challenges that the approach entails for digital methods. Keywords: Digital methods, Facebook, publics, controversy, Latour, congestion charges