From media technologies to mediated events: a different settlement between media studies and science and technology studies

Moats, David

doi:10.1080/1369118x.2017.1410205

Cited by 11 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…The interactivity of contemporary digital media often requires demonstrators to confront questions of public participation. As Girard and Stark's (2007) analysis of demonstrations by experts and activists around the post-9/11 inquiry into the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan showed, digital media technologies can not only expand participation in the process of gathering and presenting evidence but also reframe the issue and relevant spaces of public assembly (see also Moats, 2019). The interactivity of digital media technologies can also be harnessed by demonstrators to close-down issues.…”

Section: Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon removal demonstrations and problems of public perception

Waller,

Cox,

Bellamy

2023

WIREs Climate Change

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Expectations about the future removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere have mobilized projects which seek to demonstrate carbon removal methods, at various stages of development. Public perceptions play a critical role in demonstrations and funders widely require demonstration projects to identify and consult affected groups and communities. This review examines the extant research on perceptions of carbon removal, analyzing how studies have conceptualized the public and the role perceptions play in field trials and experiments of carbon removal methods. The paper develops a novel analytical framework distinguishing between “procedural” and “performative” approaches to demonstrations. Attending to performativity, we suggest, makes clear why demonstration projects often surface conflicting expectations about future technology development. We apply the analytical framework to the academic literature on perceptions of carbon removal using a systematic search and interpretive review. We find that much perceptions research on carbon removal adopts elements from linear models of innovation, foregrounding the problem of social acceptance and distancing the public from experimental presentations and displays. We situate these findings in a discussion of the roles that expectations about carbon removal play in demonstrations and the positioning of perceptions research as a tool for managing “opposition” from external audiences. Moving beyond instrumental approaches to public perception, the review makes the case for closer engagement in perceptions research with conflicting expectations that emerge around projects demonstrating the “promise” of carbon removal.This article is categorized under: The Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice Perceptions, Behavior, and Communication of Climate Change > Perceptions of Climate Change Climate, History, Society, Culture > Technological Aspects and Ideas

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Section: Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Carbon removal demonstrations and problems of public perception

Waller,

Cox,

Bellamy

2023

WIREs Climate Change

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“…The commercialisation of public ‘attention’ in digital societies has been widely documented (Madsen, 2015) – for instance, pay-per-click advertising – and often occupies a key place in contemporary innovation strategies (Birch et al, 2020). To avoid adopting platform logics that equate popularity with importance, issue mapping approaches, therefore, require a sociotechnical understanding of how platform dynamics contribute to the visibility of issues (Marres, 2015; Moats, 2019). This point is pertinent for analysing how online publicity for a speculative invention like vertical farming can contribute to inflating its value as a focus for technological innovation.…”

Section: Issue Mapping and Public Engagement With Emerging Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A significant methodological criticism about online issue mapping centres on how to reality-check an issue map, for example, to test whether visualisations of issues on online platforms hold empirical relevance to public debates. A key concern here is that social media research methods can take for granted the public relevance of digital media, often implicitly operationalising distinctions between online and offline publics that are native to particular platforms (Moats, 2019). To address the problem of public relevance, we designed an experiment in which we developed a simple software tool (which we call a “device”, building on Marres and Lezaun, 2016) to engage ‘offline’ publics in the process of mapping issues on one platform.…”

Section: Issue Mapping and Public Engagement With Emerging Technologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-visioning public engagement with emerging technology: A digital methods experiment on ‘vertical farming’

Waller

Gugganig²

2021

Public Underst Sci

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This article presents the results of a public engagement experiment on a project trialling ‘vertical farming’, an emerging technology addressing urban food issues. The experiment developed within an issue mapping project, analysing debates about vertical farming on the digital platforms, Twitter and Instagram. The article presents a software tool designed to engage ‘offline’ publics in the issue mapping process, using images collected from Instagram. We describe testing this software tool with visitors to exhibitions of vertical farming in two science and technology museums. Our findings highlight the predominance of commercial publicity about vertical farming on Twitter and Instagram and the organisation of public attention around technological novelty. The article discusses the challenges such publicity dynamics pose to mapping issues on platforms. We suggest some ways digital methods might contribute to public engagement with technologies, like vertical farming, that are a focus of organised commercialised innovation.

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“…The data witnessing of Amnesty's Decoders may be viewed as part of its 'digital action repertoires' (Selander & Jarvenpaa, 2016). Rather than focusing exclusively on the products of quantification or datafication, these projects may be viewed in relational termsas 'data assemblages' (Kitchin, 2014;Kitchin & Lauriault, 2018) or 'media ensembles' (Moats, 2017)…”

Section: Varieties Of Witnessingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data witnessing: attending to injustice with data in Amnesty International’s Decoders project

Gray

2019

Information, Communication & Society

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The concept of witnessing has been used to explore the construction of evidence and experience in settings of law, religion, atrocity, media, history and science. Recent research has examined how digital technologies may multiply the involvement of remote, non-present and unanticipated actors in the witnessing of events. This paper examines what digital data practices at Amnesty International's Decoders initiative can add to the understanding of witnessing. It introduces the notion of 'data witnessing' with reference to four projects on (i) witnessing historical abuses with structured data from digitised documents; (ii) witnessing the destruction of villages with satellite imagery and machine learning; (iii) witnessing environmental injustice with company reports and photographs; and (iv) witnessing online abuse through the classification of Twitter data. These projects illustrate the configuration of experimental apparatuses for witnessing injustices with data. In contrast to accounts which emphasise the presence of an individual human witness at the scene, Amnesty's data practices are conspicuously collective and distributed, rendering the systemic scale of injustices at a distance, across space and time. Such practices may contribute to research on both (new) media witnessing and data politics, suggesting ways in which care, concern and solidarity may be constructed, structured, extended and delimited by means of digital data.

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From media technologies to mediated events: a different settlement between media studies and science and technology studies

Cited by 11 publications

References 32 publications

Carbon removal demonstrations and problems of public perception

Carbon removal demonstrations and problems of public perception

Re-visioning public engagement with emerging technology: A digital methods experiment on ‘vertical farming’

Data witnessing: attending to injustice with data in Amnesty International’s Decoders project

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