I. Research Ethics in the Digital Age Ethics for the Social Sciences and Humanities in Times of Mediatization and Digitization Edited by Farina Madita Dobrick · Jana Fischer Lutz M. Hagen, Springer VS, 2018.
This book discusses the emerging problems in research ethics in the environment of digitization and media. Nuances based on issues arising out of discrepancies between the discourse on fundamentals in theology and discourse on application of research ethics, the book emphasis on a range of examples that deal with plagiarism, fraud, responsibility in academic sphere, data analysis in the academic field. The digital age in which ‘the social action is more and more embedded in complex technologies’ (p.16) cannot be ignored as it leads to alteration in social behavior and cultural traditions. The advent of digital age has provided new research methods but has also raised new research areas and questions as it continues to impact the society at large. The social networks, surveillance, tracking by public agencies, computational analysis of human actions. Although automated decision-making processes and practices have reduced the complexities and produce information which has led to the formation of a new key word, i.e. Big Data. The mediatization and digitization increase the data volume and accessibility of (quantitative) research and proliferate methodological opportunities for scientific analyses. various strategies employed by researchers in doing digital research have been highlighted in the chapters. The book provides examples of an integrated approach to research in the digital age and brings together various research articles that focus on various aspects of the interrelationship between humans and digital media. Based on themes of developing research standards in a digitized world, digital publishing and applying research ethics to different digital environments, the book discusses the consequences of digitization and mediatization concerning the subjects, objects and addressees of research in social sciences and humanities within a transdisciplinary perspective. The book collects and points out a great variety of challenges the individual researcher but also the scientific community and institutions face in times and as a consequence of digitization and mediatization. Thereby it demonstrates the importance and the necessity of interdisciplinarity in research projects that work in digitized and mediatized fields. Meaning that only research projects that integrate the knowledge of ethicists, informatics, legal scholars and social scientists can successfully tackle relevant questions of a digitized and mediatized world.
II. DIGITAL DILEMMAS Transforming gender identities and power relations in everyday life Edited by Diana C. Parry, Corey W. Johnson and Simone Fullagar, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
The book focuses on the dilemmas of the intersections of gender, oppression, opportunity and digitality that is created through the use of technology in everyday life. Beginning with Apple’s Siri, the “digital assistant” has been gradually incorporated into the normative parameters of everyday life, and these digital helpers have now become desirable features of homes with products like the Amazon Echo and Google Home. Data are transmitted through (often poorly secured) internet connections, to major corporations to be processed, stored, acted upon, and sold through global networks that entangle gendered labour and leisure. In exchange for their convenience, personal information is extracted from the ebbs and flows of everyday activity. The book explores the nature of digital spaces and the connected and compounded effects that those spaces can have on shaping digital embodiments. Using various feminist theories, we discuss the discursive and ideological formation of gender imbricated in gender injustice, and outline how the intersection of gendered understandings with technological fluidity creates spaces where individuals can be simultaneously empowered and subjugated. In doing so, we will draw upon existing work that has explored elements of these dilemmas and bring those works together to examine the interrelationships of gendered leisure, advocacy, and civic engagement. We seek to advance new approaches to understanding, critiquing, and mobilizing action within the complex gendered relations that are entangled in leisure spaces and digital practices.The problems and paradoxes created through the intersection of gender ideology and the possibilities of digital environments create both spaces of positive explorations and embodiments, as well as sites of gender injustice. These opportunities and dilemmas, produced through leisure-related practices and digital public culture, are where attention is needed to produce cultural and critical inquiry.The book contributes to the current debates in digital humanities and social science (digital sociology, science and technology studies, cultural studies, leisure studies, and pedagogy) through a focus on key dilemmas occurring at the intersection of public culture, policy, practice, and everyday gender relations. It generates new conversations across two broadly defined bodies of scholarship gender studies/social justice and digital sociology/leisure studies. Since limited attention has been paid to questions of gender and power as they manifest in our digital leisure lives in relation to changing notions of freedom, choice, and social well-being. Gender issues have yet to be comprehensively addressed within the emerging focus on digital technologies, despite special issues of key journals, like Leisure Studies (2016), which focused on promoting the digital in leisure studies and building a “lively leisure studies that can make sense of the constantly changing worlds of lively devices and lively data” (Lupton 2016, p. 711), the Leisure Sciences (2018) special issue on popular leisure in a digital age, and texts such as Spracklen’s (2015) Digital Leisure, the Internet and Popular Culture.
Exploring leisure-related digital practices that are virtual and visceral, the book is broadly oriented around three digital dilemmas:
- How the influence of diverse virtual voices at the inter-Section of gender and (in)justice can be theorized?
- How innovative methodologies can enable new insights into the social transformation of gender relations, digital cultures, and social justice?
- How is digital technology shaping relationships between diverse publics— citizens, communities, activists, policymakers—in terms of transforming gender injustice?
The book will help in understanding ‘Gender’ in ‘Digital’ arena.
III. The Short Film, Tagged
The film Tagged adopts a dramatic realist style of presentation and has won several awards for its production and content quality (ACMA, 2012). It is a believable narrative account of various incidents relating to techno-social life across digital and school spaces that allows the possibility, through discussion, for young people to reflect on the actions and ethics of the characters presented, and develop critical evaluations of the gendered scenarios depicted. Tagged is a fable of digital risk and reputation management. This film showcases how young citizens (youth, adolescents, teenagers) of digital world encounter the perils of digital world in their daily lives and face the consequences. They learn and unlearn the rules of protecting themselves the sexual crimes in digital world. Sexting, cyberbullying and digital citizenship are the main components of the film that raise the issue of formal and informal rules and ethics of digital media and communication technologies. The gender politics in social and digital lives is also a dimension that is closely associated with the shaping of digital culture in virtual world.The core message in this film is that using technology is about managing a set of risks and gendered social relations.
IV. Nuria Rodríguez-Ortega (2019): Digital Art History: The Questions that Need to Be Asked, Visual Resources.
This article provides a critical overview of the evolution of the field of digital art history since the 2013special issue of Visual Resources dedicated to digital art history. The author reviews the narratives that are generated through the field of digital art history and examines to what degree these should be re-evaluated in the light of post-digital society which consists of post-humanistic thinking. The author combines the historical overview with a prospective focus on digital art history in the forthcoming years. The article critically dissects the meaning of digitized art history and digital art history and poses questions on the technological methods that could be adopted to research on digital art history and in digital humanities. Discussions on the contemporary impact of digital rupture on traditional forms of art history and making way to digital art history captivates the reader and forces to think upon awareness of the future of techno-progressive narrative, making way for other perspectives to follow. Suggesting the formation of a pluralistic model for digital art history, the author implies the need for transformative digital art history. The article is a must read for those interested in digitization of art history.
* These assignments are the intellectual property of the students of DCNM 2019. The system administrator(s) have not edited the content of the assignments except for minor spelling and grammar checks. We would deeply appreciate if you could give a citation to the authors/contributors and this website in case the content is used for research, teaching and other academic purposes.
