Digital Methods and the Evolution of the Epistemology of Social Sciences

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Enrica Amaturo ◽  
Biagio Aragona
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Digital Methods

scholarly journals Teleoptical Perspectives on Digital Methods: Scientific Claims and Consequences

2021 ◽  
pp. 75-102
Author(s):  
Julia Pennlert ◽  
Björn Ekström ◽  
David Gunnarsson Lorentzen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Research Communities ◽  
The Social ◽  
Digital Methods ◽  
Knowledge Claims ◽  
Science And Research

Computer-assisted tools have introduced new ways to conduct research in the social sciences and the humanities. Digital methods, as an umbrella term for this line of methodology, have presented new vocabularies that affect research communities from different disciplines. The aim of this chapter is to discuss how digital methods can be understood and scrutinized as procedures of collecting, analyzing, visualizing, and interpreting born-digital and digitized material. We aim to problematize how the embracing of digital methods in the research process paves the way for certain knowledge claims. By adopting a teleoptical metaphor in order to scrutinize three case studies, our aim is to discuss the limitations and the possibilities for digital methods as a way of conducting science and research. The contribution addresses how and to what extent digital methods direct the researcher’s gaze toward particular focal points.

scholarly journals Médialab stories: How to align actor network theory and digital methods

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205395171881672
Author(s):  
Dominique Boullier
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Structural Analysis ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network ◽  
Individual Preferences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Digital Methods

The history of laboratories may become controversial in social sciences. In this paper, the story of Sciences Po Médialab told by Venturini et al. is discussed and completed by demonstrating the incoherence in the choice of digital methods at the Médialab from the actor network theory perspective. As the Médialab mostly used web topologies as structural analysis of social positions, they were not able to account for the propagation of ideas, considered in actor network theory as non-humans that have their own agency. The main arguments in favour of the ‘more continuous social’ developed at the Médialab (quali-quanti, following the actors, zooming) proved to be as misleading as the network metaphor. The distribution of agency that actor network theory so successfully expands was paradoxicallty reduced to structures and individual preferences, to the detriment of the agency of replications that circulate entities in the form of messages, content or memes, and that should now become the next step for actor network theory-style digital methods.

scholarly journals Art Markets and Digital Histories

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Sandra van Ginhoven ◽  
Claartje Rasterhoff
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Computer Technology ◽  
Art History ◽  
Art Market ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Digital Art ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Art Markets ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Digital Methods

This Special Issue of Arts investigates the use of digital methods in the study of art markets and their histories. Digital art history or historical research facilitated by computer-technology in general is omnipresent in academia and increasingly supported by an infrastructure of seminars, workshops, networks, journals and other platforms for sharing results, exchanging notes and developing criticism. As the wealth of historical and contemporary data is rapidly expanding and digital technologies are becoming integral to research in the humanities and social sciences, it is high time to reflect on the different strategies that art market scholars employ to navigate and negotiate digital techniques and resources.

Searching for ‘Digital Asia’ in its Networks: Where the Spatial Turn Meets the Digital Turn

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 57-92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Higher Education ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
Digital Methods ◽  
New Challenges ◽  
Do So

This article examines how digital methods can provide a way to search for ‘Digital Asia’ in its networks, interfaces, and media contents. Using the example of higher education institutions in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei, the paper explores how search engines, institutional homepages, and hyperlink networks provide access into the workings and representations of academia online. The article finds that even a seemingly cosmopolitan endeavour such as academia exists in rather parochial spheres, and that users that enter those spheres do so in highly biased ways. Further reviewing the digital tools that lead to these findings, the article also argues that while digital methods promise to bring together the ‘digital turn’ and the ‘spatial turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, they also pose new challenges. These include theoretical concerns, like the risk of implicitly reproducing views of neoliberal modernity, but also practical concerns related to digital literacy.

scholarly journals Tool Criticism and the Computational Turn. A “Methodological Moment” in Media and Communication Studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-64
Author(s):  
Karin van Es ◽  
Mirko Tobias Schäfer ◽  
Maranke Wieringa
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Academic Field ◽  
Accountability Measures ◽  
Science Wars ◽  
Institutional Contexts ◽  
Digital Methods ◽  
Humanities And Social Sciences ◽  
Media And Communication

As ever more data becomes available to work with, the use of digital tools within the humanities and social sciences is becoming increasingly common. These digital tools are often imported from other institutional contexts and were originally developed for other purposes. They may harbour concepts and techniques that stand in tension with traditions in the humanities and social sciences. Moreover, there are many easy-to-use tools for the collection, processing and analysis of data that require no knowledge of their limitations. Problematically, these tools are often assigned such values as reliability and transparency when in fact they are active mediators caught up in the epistemic process. In this paper, we highlight the need for a critical, reflexive attitude toward the tools we use in digital methods. It is a plea for what we call “tool criticism” and an attempt to think through what this mode of criticism would entail in practice for the academic field. The need for tool criticism is contextualised in view of the emerging ideological and methodological critique toward digital methods. Touching on the so-called science wars we explore knowledge as a construction and consider the importance of accounting for knowledge claims. These considerations open up an assessment of the accountability measures that are being discussed and developed in our field by individuals and institutions alike. In conclusion, we underscore the urgency of this endeavour and its vital role for media and communication scholars.

What Can We Learn From Factorial Surveys About Human Behavior?

Methodology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Petzold ◽  
Tobias Wolbring
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Behavioral Intentions ◽  
Actual Behavior ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Factorial Survey ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Intended Behavior ◽  
The Social ◽  
Survey Experiments ◽  
High Level

Abstract. Factorial survey experiments are increasingly used in the social sciences to investigate behavioral intentions. The measurement of self-reported behavioral intentions with factorial survey experiments frequently assumes that the determinants of intended behavior affect actual behavior in a similar way. We critically investigate this fundamental assumption using the misdirected email technique. Student participants of a survey were randomly assigned to a field experiment or a survey experiment. The email informs the recipient about the reception of a scholarship with varying stakes (full-time vs. book) and recipient’s names (German vs. Arabic). In the survey experiment, respondents saw an image of the same email. This validation design ensured a high level of correspondence between units, settings, and treatments across both studies. Results reveal that while the frequencies of self-reported intentions and actual behavior deviate, treatments show similar relative effects. Hence, although further research on this topic is needed, this study suggests that determinants of behavior might be inferred from behavioral intentions measured with survey experiments.

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