Hybrids, materiality, and black boxes: Concepts of actor‐network theory in data journalism research

Stalph, Florian

doi:10.1111/soc4.12738

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…In our view, society can be understood as the outcome of networks of connections among human, agents, technologies and objects, but our perspective on these connections is a nuanced view. This view is well described by Stalph (2019) stating that…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Taking togetherness apart: From digital footprints to geno-digital spores

et al. 2021

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Increasingly, the lines of our lives are prescribed, mediated, drawn and knotted together by digital technologies. It has been argued that ‘digital footprints’, as a trail of user data points collected from online communities and networks, can assist in better understanding human behaviour and social interaction, initially focused on mainly real-time and retrospective analysis. In our attempts at sense-making of togetherness in a COVID-19/post-COVID-19 world, we believe it may be an oversimplification to conceptualise our daily data trails as ‘digital footprints’. The nature of our interaction with these technologies as well as their interaction with us have changed deeply ever since the rapid growth of digital connectivity. The character of these symbiotic relationships has been accentuated even more by our global experience of ‘connected disconnection’ during the pandemic’s lockdowns. Against this background, we expand the concept of ‘geno-digital spores’ as a more appropriate metaphor for the manner within which data and technology combine in new ways to create (or fracture) lines of togetherness.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Taking togetherness apart: From digital footprints to geno-digital spores

et al. 2021

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“…Our study draws on the ANT concepts of black-boxing and punctualization; we argue that these concepts help us understand the ways that COVID-19 influenced the relational identities of journalists serving rural communities. The black box, in the actor-network context, is a "closed artificial unit" in which actants integrate into a process or network that accomplishes some goal without inviting analysis or regular scrutiny (Stalph, 2019;p. 3).…”

Section: The Actor-network Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scooped by the town drunk”: COVID-19 as an actor in the rural journalist’s network

Mari,

Perreault,

Walsh

et al. 2024

Preprint

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Journalists serving rural communities are crucial sources of information across the U.S.; they also face challenges and opportunities unlike those of their peers at large urban outlets. In this study, we take the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to examine how these journalists define their group identities. We focus on local news creators to ask: How has COVID-19 influenced the identities of small-town and rural journalists in the U.S.? Using an approach informed by actor-network theory and social identity theory, we analyze interviews conducted during the height of the pandemic with 35 rural and small-town journalists across the Midwest, Appalachia, and Gulf South regions to understand the effects of COVID-19 on journalistic identities. We find that the pandemic disrupted the newsgathering process, depunctualizing it in a way that highlighted the centrality of relationships to the rural journalist’s identity. First, by physically distancing journalists from their sources, COVID-19 highlighted the importance of in-person connections. Second, by increasing the amount of contentious news available to report on, COVID-19 highlighted the tension between preserving news values and protecting community relationships. Our findings highlight the far-reaching effects of one actant in a network and the ways journalists in crisis situations negotiate conflicting pressures.

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“…As such, they retain the same ontological value and associate in socio-material networks (Müller 2015;Scheel 2021). More precisely, the chain of associations is spearheaded by a 'key' actor or 'primary' entity, which goes on incorporating additional actants (Stalph 2019). The scale and stability of entities or projects depend upon the number and solidity of connections among (non-)humans attained as well as the 'sociotechnological compromises' necessary for these connections to be entrenched (Latour 1996a(Latour , 2005.…”

Section: Actor Network Theory and The Sociology Of Translationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Translating EUrope’s Return Migration Regime to The Gambia: The Incorporation of Local CSOs

2022

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The end of a long-standing autocratic regime in The Gambia renewed EUrope's geopolitical interest in the externalisation of (return) migration management to the West African country. Since 2017, EUrope has financed several programmes implemented by a combination of international and local actors. Analysing original qualitative data through the lens of the sociology of translation (SoT) offered by actor-network theory (ANT), this paper explores the incorporation of locally owned civil society organisations (CSOs) within the socio-material network of externalisation. As such, it engages with the understudied perspective of Southern implementers in the context of migration management. In our analysis, we put central two notions of SoT: interessement and enrolment. With the first, we show how the development and migrant-protection interests of locally owned CSOs are brought in alignment with the EUropean objective of curtailing irregular migration. This process of interessement is never complete, but leaves room for excess positions, which here correspond to the locally owned CSOs' criticism of EUrope's appropriation of Gambian natural resources, practical organisation of migration management and excessive immobilisation of Gambians. The notion of enrolment refers to the processes of negotiation addressing part of these excess positions. Even with enrolment being successful, locally owned CSOs keep imagining, and to some extent, performing alternative ways of dealing with migration. Such alternative thinking and practicing will overtake the EUropean only if multiple and stable connections arise around it. Our ANT-driven analysis demonstrates that local implementers endorse EUropean migration management because they broadly see it as beneficial; yet, with their criticism, requests and imagination, manage to limitedly alter it, and may, potentially, transform it.

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Hybrids, materiality, and black boxes: Concepts of actor‐network theory in data journalism research

Cited by 11 publications

References 58 publications

Taking togetherness apart: From digital footprints to geno-digital spores

Taking togetherness apart: From digital footprints to geno-digital spores

Scooped by the town drunk”: COVID-19 as an actor in the rural journalist’s network

Translating EUrope’s Return Migration Regime to The Gambia: The Incorporation of Local CSOs

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