The integration of digital technologies into social science has catalyzed the development of fields such as digital sociology, digital humanities, and digital social sciences more broadly. This technological shift has significant methodological implications for social science research, which are being increasingly discussed. This discussion raises critical questions about the potential and limitations of merging traditional social research methodologies with digital innovations. Digitized and digital methods have brought about promises of a new era in (...) social science research. However, some scholars have highlighted the challenges and limitations associated with this methodological transition, including data-relevant considerations, skill and expertise issues, and ethical concerns. From the vantage point of advancements in science and technology studies (STS) – a discipline that has engaged with the methods and practices of knowledge production for some decades – I will explore five additional methodological challenges posed by the digitization of social science research that has been largely overlooked or neglected in the literature of digital methods. Our analysis concludes that while digital methods can serve as valuable complementary tools, they are not sufficient to fully engage with the core practices and phenomena of social science research. Thus, digital and traditional methods can coexist, albeit not in a symmetrical manner. (shrink)

What could a social-justice oriented, feminist data studies look like? The current datalogical turn foregrounds the digital datafication of everyday life, increasing algorithmic processing and data as an emergent regime of power/knowledge. Scholars celebrate the politics of big data knowledge production for its omnipotent objectivity or dismiss it outright as data fundamentalism that may lead to methodological genocide. In this feminist and postcolonial intervention into gender-, race- and geography-blind ‘big data’ ideologies, I call for ethical, anti-oppressive digital data-driven (...) research in the social sciences and humanities. I argue that a reflexive data scholarship can emerge from the reintegration of feminist and postcolonial science studies and ethics of care ideals. Although it is not a panacea for all ails of data mining, I offer a road map for an alternative data-analysis practice that is more power-sensitive and accountable. By incorporating a people-centric and context-aware perspective that acknowledges relationships of dependency, reflects on temptations, and scrutinises benefits and harm, an ‘asymmetrically reciprocal’ (Young, 1997) research encounter may be achieved. I bring this perspective to bear on experiences of a two-year research project with eighty-four young Londoners on digital identities and living in a highly diverse city. I align awareness of uneven relations of power and knowledge with the messy relation of dependency between human and non-human actors in data analysis. This framework productively recognises that digital data cannot be expected to speak for itself, that data do not emerge from a vacuum, and that isolated data patterns cannot be the end-goal of a situated and reflexive research endeavor. Data-driven research, in turn, shows the urgency for renewed feminist ethical reflection on how digital mediation impacts upon responsibility, intersectional power relations, human subjectivity and the autonomy of research participants over their own data. (shrink)

This article takes stock of recent efforts to implement controversy analysis as a digital method in the study of science, technology, and society and beyond and outlines a distinctive approach to address the problem of digital bias. Digital media technologies exert significant influence on the enactment of controversy in online settings, and this risks undermining the substantive focus of controversy analysis conducted by digital means. To address this problem, I propose a shift in thematic focus from (...) controversy analysis to issue mapping. The article begins by distinguishing between three broad frameworks that currently guide the development of controversy analysis as a digital method, namely, demarcationist, discursive, and empiricist. Each has been adopted in STS, but only the last one offers a digital “move beyond impartiality.” I demonstrate this approach by analyzing issues of Internet governance with the aid of the social media platform Twitter. (shrink)

Making publics visible through digital traces has recently generated interest by practitioners of public engagement and scholars within the field of digital methods. This paper presents an experiment in moving such methods into critical proximity with political practice and discusses how digital visualizations of topical debates become appropriated by actors and hardwired into existing ecologies of publics and politics. Through an experiment in rendering a specific data-public visible, it shows how the interplay between diverse conceptions (...) of the public as well as the specific platforms and data invoked, resulted in a situated affordance-space that allowed specific renderings take shape, while disadvantaging others. Furthermore, it argues that several accepted tropes in the literatures of digital methods ended up being problematic guidelines in this space. Among these is the prescription to shown heterogeneity by pushing back at established media logics. (shrink)

Our society is heavily mediated by information technologies, so the simplest interactions become traceable, which collaborates to a deluge of data. They represent an abundant source for social analysis and an unparalleled opportunity for citizens to access, produce and disseminate information. Nevertheless, all this affluence of data, for presenting itself in a scattered way, also poses significant difficulties for achieving an integrated view of social reality and its interactions, and is organized in many competing interfaces and information architectures, that may (...) produce, reinforce and disseminate ideologies, hegemonic discourse and platform biases. We identify an emerging field of dispute of the place of mediation of the many flows of information, and efforts for repurposing and restructuring these flows over the seamless structuring of different competing architectures. In order to describe some of these efforts, we draw examples from the field of controversy mapping, and propose the concept of reverse mediation. (shrink)

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 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. (shrink)

The online space has become a digital public square, where individuals interact and share ideas on the most trivial to the most serious of matters, including discussions of controversial ethical issues in science, technology and medicine. In the last decade, new disciplines like computational social science and social data science have created methods to collect and analyse such data that have considerably expanded the scope of social science research. Empirical bioethics can benefit from the integration of such (...) class='Hi'>digital methods to investigate novel digital phenomena and trace how bioethical issues take shape online.Here, using concrete examples, we demonstrate how novel methods based on digital approaches in the social sciences can be used effectively in the domain of bioethics. We show that a digital turn in bioethics research aligns with the established aims of empirical bioethics, integrating with normative analysis and expanding the scope of the discipline, thus offering ways to reinforce the capacity of bioethics to tackle the increasing complexity of present-day ethical issues in science and technology. We propose to call this domain of research in bioethicsdigital bioethics. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a brief overview of the ethical challenges facing researchers engaging with web archival materials and demonstrates a framework and method for conducting research with historical web data created by young people.,This paper’s methodology is informed by the conceptual framing of data materials in research on the “right to be forgotten” (Crossen-White, 2015; GDPR, 2018; Tsesis, 2014), data afterlives (Agostinho, 2019; Stevenson and Gehl, 2019; Sutherland, 2017), indigenous data sovereignty and governance (Wemigwans, 2018) and feminist ethics (...) of care (Cifor et al., 2019; Cowan, 2020; Franzke et al., 2020; Luka and Millette, 2018). It demonstrates a new method called an archive promenade, which builds on the walkthrough and scroll-back methods (Light et al., 2018; Robards and Lincoln, 2017).,The archive promenades demonstrate how individual attachments to digital traces vary and are often unpredictable, which necessitates further steps to ensure that privacy and data sovereignty are maintained through research with web archives.,This paper demonstrates how the archive promenade methodological intervention can lead to better practices of care with sensitive web materials and brings together previous work on ethical fabrications (Markham, 2012), speculation (Luka and Millette, 2018) and thick context (Marzullo et al., 2018), to yield new insights for research on the experiences of growing up online. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to intervene in debates about the digital and, in particular, framings that imagine the digital in terms of epochal shifts or as redefining life. Instead, drawing on recent developments in digital methods, we explore the lively, productive and performative qualities of the digital by attending to the specificities of digital devices and how they interact, and sometimes compete, with older devices and their capacity to mobilize and materialize social (...) and other relations. In doing so, our aim is to explore the implications of digital devices and data for reassembling social science methods or what we call the social science apparatuses that assemble digital devices and data to ‘know’ the social and other relations. Building on recent work at CRESC on the social life of methods, we recommend a genealogical approach that is alive to the ways in which digital devices are simultaneously shaped by social worlds, and can in turn become agents that shape those worlds. This calls for attending to the specificities of digital devices themselves, how they are varied and composed of diverse socio-technical arrangements, and are enrolled in the creation of new knowledge spaces, institutions and actors. Rather than exploring what large-scale changes can be revealed and understood through the digital, we argue for explorations of how digital devices themselves are materially implicated in the production and performance of contemporary sociality. To that end we offer the following nine propositions about the implications of digital data and devices and argue that these demand rethinking the theoretical assumptions of social science methods: transactional actors; heterogeneity; visualization; continuous time; whole populations; granularity; expertise; mobile and mobilizing; and non-coherence. (shrink)

Digitalization goes hand in hand with a fundamental change in methods that has the potential to change people’s thinking, decisions and actions. Departing from this thesis, a structure is proposed for the analysis of the method change induced by digitalization. The article provides a brief outline of the driving forces, the forms and the effects of this method change.

The article describes the state of affairs and prospects for research and development in the domain of active use of digitalization and computer programming in the study of the Indian intellectual tradition. The term “Digital Indology” is used this term as an analogy of the expression “Digital Humanities”. Here, it will be understood as the reception and study of philosophical and other classical texts of Ancient and Medieval India with the usage of digital technologies, mathematical statistics, contextual (...) analysis methods alongside with the traditional well-established approaches of philosophy and the humanities. The main trends in the development of digital philosophical Indology are being outlined The use of mathematical statistics and the methods of contextual analysis are suggested as typical auxiliary methods while analyzing classical texts of India. We do not close our eyes to the possible hidden dangers of a possible fascination with digital methods. Our brief manifesto of Digital Philosophical Indology is to define it exclusively being tool for classical Indological research, which retain its specific philosophical objectives and goals. (shrink)

The times of restricting reading to just sitting with a book in a cozy armchair are gone. If you ask a modern teenager or university student how they would prefer to do it, the chances are fairly high that the answer you’ll get is a computer screen or an iPad. Digital technologies have become an ordinary tool for everybody dealing with literature, including common readers, students in the field, and professional scholars who have dedicated their lives to literary research. (...) This means the time has come to simultaneously revise the way literature is taught and explored, and this is where the volume Literary Education and Digital Learning: Methods and Technologies for Humanities Studies, edited by Willie van Peer .. (shrink)

This study focuses on analyzing the interactions between technological platforms and evaluation methods in the educational digital ecosystem. The main objective is to identify the key variables that influence this environment and offer recommendations to improve the online educational experience. This is an exploratory study with a mixed approach, using the MICMAC technique to analyze the influence and dependence of the identified variables. The results reveal the importance of aspects such as the quality of content and technological infrastructure, (...) as well as the need to improve usability and interactivity in online educational platforms. The conclusions highlight the complexity and interdependence of variables in the educational digital ecosystem, underlining the importance of addressing a variety of technical, operational, and pedagogical aspects to promote effective learning in the digital era. (shrink)

Historically, empirical research in bioethics has drawn on methods developed within the social sciences, including qualitative interviews, focus groups, ethnographic studies, and opinion surveys, t...

Purpose: The inspection of the World Wide Web reveals a multitude of speculative, frequently contradictory diagnoses: the dynamic evolution of the media demonstrably correlates with a multitude of competing descriptions. It is the author's attempt and the purpose of this paper to systematize the descriptive approaches from a meta-observer's point of view. Approach: The author takes advantage of a constructivist "philosophy of distinctions" (Heinz von Foerster), employing it as a strategy of presentation and reflection. He starts with some general remarks (...) describing this philosophy of distinctions, then using a number of central guiding differences (e.g., mass communication/individual communication, private/public etc.) as a suitable instrument to systematize a wide variety of descriptions. In the concluding section, he outlines an analytical method of meta-observation and specifies, in an abstract way, tendencies of potential discourse change which can be seen regarding the WWW and the emerging worlds of communication. It is demonstrated in what ways such a method could be helpful in seeking out the changes and the varying assessments of the life-world cyberspace. Conclusion: The author comes to the conclusion that the analytical method of observing distinctions that has been proposed here is capable of continual refinement; its design is sufficiently complex to permit a situation-specific activation and immediate reaction whenever unexpected developmental tendencies emerge and the contours of digital worlds of communication begin to change again and again. (shrink)

The purpose of the study is to present the author's method of digitalization of transactions of solved business tasks to reduce transaction costs of a manufacturing enterprise. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the elements of digitalization are proposed in the work to reduce the transaction costs of searching for information, negotiating, measuring, and concluding a contract. The introduction of digital technologies into specific business tasks contributes to the optimization of transaction costs in the (...) modern institutional environment. As a result, the information relationship of the structural divisions of the production company was established during the performance of their functions at all stages of the production cycle from procurement to sales, the functional filling subsystems of the organizational structure were determined. Transaction costs, in accordance with their classification, are structured according to these subsystems, they represent the elements of digitalization recommended for use in the business processes of a manufacturing company to reduce its transaction costs. The introduction of digitalization processes of business tasks into the management structure helps to increase the level of validity and speed of decisions in the subsystems of the organizational structure of the company. (shrink)

Digital technologies have changed nearly every aspect of our lives over the last two decades. As Warschauer, Zheng, and Park (2013, p. 825) put it, ‘there is little serious writing that is not done...

Abbildungsverzeichnis 8Abkürzungsverzeichnis 9I Verfahrensentwicklung: Topic-informierte Diskursanalyse zur Analyse von Diskurstransformationen im Zeitverlauf1 Einleitung 112 Forschungsstand 202.1 Wissenschaftliche Dichotomien in der Krise 222.1.1 Big Data und das Aufbrechen etablierter Forschungsparadigmen 222.1.2 Von der Notwendigkeit eines Digitalen Forschungsparadigmas 242.2 Digital Humanities zwischen Transparadigmatischem Forschungsprogramm und paradigmatischer Positionierung 252.2.1 Digital Humanities als eigenständige Wissenschaftsdisziplin? 252.2.2 Digital Humanities zwischen digitalem Forschungsparadigma und methodischer Neutralität 272.3 Methodenstreit 2.0: Digital Humanities zwischen 'End of Theory' und 'Anything goes' 292.3.1 Datengeleitete versus theoriegeleitete Forschung (...) 302.3.2 End of Theory in den Computational Sciences? 332.3.3 Anything goes - Methodenanarchismus als digitales Paradigma? 352.4 Digital Humanities zwischen 'Digital' und 'Humanities' 392.4.1 Der Qualitative Turn in den Digital Humanities 392.4.2 Cultural Turn in den Digital Humanities als mögliche Brückenbildung? 402.5 Bridging the Digital Gap - Dritte Wege für die Digital Humanities 423 Bridging the Paradigm Gap - Grundlegung eines integrativen Forschungsansatzes 433.1 Von inkommensurablen Paradigmen... 443.2...über eine Übersetzung des sozialwissenschaftlichen Forschungsprozesses in die Digital Humanities 463.2.1 Der sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungsprozess im Mixed-Methods Design 473.2.2 Vier Positionierungen im Forschungsprozess 473.3...zur Konzeptionierung eines integrativen Forschungsansatzes im Mixed-Methods-Design 494 Epistemologische Ausrichtung und theoretische Perspektive 504.1 Sozialer Wandel als sozialer Konstruktionsprozess 524.1.1 Sozialkonstruktivistische Tradition - Wissenssoziologie nach Berger und Luckmann 534.1.2 Vom Sozialkonstruktivismus zum Diskurskonstruktivismus 554.2 Sozialer Wandel als diskursiver Konstruktionsprozess 574.2.1 Diskursbegriff 584.2.2 Eigenschaften von Diskursen 604.2.3 Regeln des Diskurses 634.3 Diskursforschung meets Digital Humanities 645 Methodologische Ausrichtung 665.1 Bridging the Methodological Gap - Text-Mining meets Diskursforschung 665.1.1 Text-Mining-Verfahren 685.1.2 Text-Mining meets Diskursforschung 705.2 Mixed-Methods meets Digital Humanities 715.2.1 Mixed-Methods-Forschung als Drittes Forschungsparadigma 715.2.2 Mixed-Methods-Forschung innerhalb einer pragmatistischen Ausrichtung 726 Forschungsdesign 766.1 Designs in der Mixed-Methods-Forschung 766.2 Das Exploratory Design 796.3 Erweiterung des Exploratory Design 816.4 Forschungsdesign für eine Topic-informierte Diskursanalyse 826.4.1 Variation 1: Sichtung des Forschungsstandes als qualitative Exploration 826.4.2 Variation 2: Erweiterung um eine quantitative Exploration 836.4.3 Variation 3: Erweiterung um eine dritte, qualitative Phase 836.5 Übersetzung des Forschungsdesigns in die Digital Humanities 846.5.1 Distant Reading 856.5.2 Das Interpretationsproblem im Distant Reading-Verfahren 866.5.3 Blended Reading als Überbrückungsmöglichkeit 866.5.4 Close Reading 876.6 Überblick Forschungsdesign 886.7 Verfahrensablauf 887 Methodik 957.1 Sozialwissenschaftliche Diskursanalyse 967.2 Die Kombination aus Diskursanalyse und Text-Mining-Verfahren 987.3 Topic-Modeling-Verfahren 99. (shrink)

Digital technology is playing an increasingly visible role in the organisation of many people’s work—as well as large parts of their lives more broadly. The concerns of emancipatory technology studies, or other critical accounts of technology, are often focused on finding alternative uses of technology. In many workplace contexts—from call centres to platform work—the imperatives of capital are deeply written into these technologies. Yet at the same time, many capitalist technologies are playing a key role facilitating emerging workers’ struggles. (...) For example, in the case study examined here, Deliveroo drivers rely on communication technologies like WhatsApp to organise against algorithmic management. Drawing on an ongoing workers’ inquiry, this paper seeks to consider what a workerist approach to digital technology can add to these debates. The paper outlines the challenges and opportunities for a “digital workers’ inquiry,” considering how this approach combines research with organising. The argument is divided into two main parts: first, the need for inquiries in digital work and the importance of these and second, how the process of inquiry and co-research (and the methods these involve) can be adapted and refined with digital technology. By starting the critique of technology from the workplace, this paper proposes a workerist account of how technologies can be destroyed or re-appropriated, starting from a reading of workers’ struggle. (shrink)

Background Over the last decades, the neurosciences, behavioral sciences, and the social sciences have all seen a rapid development of innovative research methods. The field of bioethics, however, has trailed behind in methodological innovation. Despite the so-called “empirical turn” in bioethics, research methodology for project development, data collection and analysis, and dissemination has remained largely restricted to surveys, interviews, and research papers. We have previously argued for a “Design Bioethics” approach to empirical bioethics methodology, which develops purpose-built methods (...) for investigation of bioethical concerns. In this paper we compare a research tool created using a design bioethics approach to a “methods-as-usual” approach in empirical bioethics. Methods Our study compared dimensions of engagement with a digital game we created, called “Tracing Tomorrow,” to a standard vignette survey. The two tools investigated the same subject matter, digital phenotyping for mental health, in a sample of 301 UK adolescents. Results Participants who played the game reported a greater sense of presence, emotional engagement, cognitive absorption, and mental health ethics insight, compared to participants who completed the vignette survey. Perceived authenticity and curiosity/motivation to learn more was equivalent for both methods. Conclusion The results of this study highlights the importance of purpose-built methodology for empirical bioethics research. (shrink)

Usual narratives among prehistoric archaeologists consider typological approaches as part of a past and outdated episode in the history of research, subsequently replaced by technological, functional, chemical, and cognitive approaches. From a historical and conceptual perspective, this paper addresses several limits of these narratives, which (1) assume a linear, exclusive, and additive conception of scientific change, neglecting the persistence of typological problems; (2) reduce collective developments to personal work (e.g. the “Bordes’” and “Laplace’s” methods in France); and (3) presuppose (...) the coherence and identity of these “methods” over time. It explores the case of the “Structural and analytical typology” method, developed in France, Spain, and Italy from the 1950s to the 2000s by Georges Laplace and his collaborators for lithic implements. This paper (1) provides a detailed historical account of the evolving content of this collective endeavour over five decades; (2) it addresses the epistemological question of what makes the identity and unity of a scientific method, demonstrating that the core component of the “analytical typology” lies in its particular way to represent real-world phenomena through its notation system; and (3) it reveals how this little known but significant episode of advances in the methods and theory of archaeology, contemporary but independent of the “New Archaeology” trend in English-speaking archaeology, was instrumental in the continuation of evolutionary perspectives in France and in the development of quantitative and formal methods in archaeology in southwestern Europe, foreseeing crucial knowledge representation issues raised today by digital methods in archaeology and data curation. (shrink)

This paper seeks to highlight the French philosopher Michel Foucault's contributions regarding his analysis of power. In this sense, the text proposes a conceptual transition around the ideas that could have interested the author within a digital context, integrating some notes and examples from the 2019 Chilean mobilizations.The article has an initial section that exposes genealogy as a way of approaching social reality. Then, it shows the social behaviors anticipation possibilities and their relationship with the information available on the (...) web. Later, it renders an account of the algorithmic governmentality notion as a key to reading it in both normative structure and a political possibility to final state reflections. (shrink)

We show how faceted search using a combination of traditional classification systems and mixed-membership topic models can go beyond keyword search to inform resource discovery, hypothesis formulation, and argument extraction for interdisciplinary research. Our test domain is the history and philosophy of scientific work on animal mind and cognition. The methods can be generalized to other research areas and ultimately support a system for semi-automatic identification of argument structures. We provide a case study for the application of the (...) class='Hi'>methods to the problem of identifying and extracting arguments about anthropomorphism during a critical period in the development of comparative psychology. We show how a combination of classification systems and mixed-membership models trained over large digital libraries can inform resource discovery in this domain. Through a novel approach of “drill-down” topic modeling—simultaneously reducing both the size of the corpus and the unit of analysis—we are able to reduce a large collection of fulltext volumes to a much smaller set of pages within six focal volumes containing arguments of interest to historians and philosophers of comparative psychology. The volumes identified in this way did not appear among the first ten results of the keyword search in the HathiTrust digital library and the pages bear the kind of “close reading” needed to generate original interpretations that is the heart of scholarly work in the humanities. Zooming back out, we provide a way to place the books onto a map of science originally constructed from very different data and for different purposes. The multilevel approach advances understanding of the intellectual and societal contexts in which writings are interpreted. (shrink)

Throughout Iran and various countries, the recent calls of the “Zan, Zendegi, Azadi” (in Persian), “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (in Kurdish), or “Woman, Life, Freedom” (in English) movement call for change to acknowledge the importance of women. While these feminist protests and demonstrations have been met with brutality, systematic oppression, and internet blackouts within Iran, they have captured significant social media attention and coverage outside the country, especially among the Iranian diaspora and various international organizations. This article, grounded in feminist urban (...) theories of the Global South, analyzes the digital feminist placemaking movement in Iran. As the first counter‐revolution led by women, the movement utilizes digital art, graffiti, and protest movements to embody women’s solidarity groups and sympathy rallies. Our analysis employs various digital research methods, including social media scrutiny and the study of protest illustrations. Analyzing the digital feminist placemaking in Iran will enable us to compare the commonalities, differences, challenges, and opportunities between the minorities and majorities in the world’s countries. The outcomes of this research can help international organizations such as Amnesty International and the United Nations Agency for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UN Women), as well as policymakers, institutions, academics, and NGOs, to highlight the various ways in which broader public participation could be encouraged in the process of digital feminist insurgent placemaking. (shrink)

The way of our living and working has changed intensely throughout the past half-century. The era we live in is interlinked with rapid technological changes, paving the way for digitalization. The students are considered digital natives and are expected to have e-learning abilities to improve their academic effectiveness. However, digital readiness is an important factor that can play a valuable role in boosting students’ e-learning abilities and satisfaction. The previous studies of students’ e-learning abilities revealed the lack of (...) students’ digital readiness for academic achievements. Therefore, the present study aims to examine the role of digital readiness in the e-learning satisfaction of students. Based on the theory of motivation, the present study attempts to check the association of digital readiness with e-learning satisfaction. The current study also determines the relationship of digital readiness with entrepreneur psychological capital. Further, this study examines the correlation of entrepreneur psychological capital with e-learning satisfaction. The present study also assumes the mediating role entrepreneur of psychological capital and moderating role of mindfulness. For empirical analyses, this study gathered data from 376 music learning students of entrepreneur training institutes in China through a structured questionnaire method using a convenient sampling technique. This study applied partial least square structural equation modeling for empirical analyses using Smart PLS software. The present study confirmed that digital readiness positively correlates with e-learning satisfaction and psychological capital. The findings also acknowledged that psychological capital positively enhances e-learning satisfaction. The results also confirmed that psychological capital mediates the association between digital readiness and e-learning satisfaction. However, the outcomes revealed that mindfulness does not moderate the association between digital readiness and e-learning satisfaction. On the other hand, the findings acknowledged that mindfulness moderates the relationship between psychological capital and e-learning satisfaction. In addition, this study’s findings also serve the literature by providing important theoretical and practical implications. This study points out that digital readiness is an important antecedent to increasing students’ learning satisfaction and performance. The findings also suggest that students’ mindfulness could play a bridging role in enhancing their performance. (shrink)

The paper explores the potential and limitations of big data for researching racism on social media. Informed by critical data studies and critical race studies, the paper discusses challenges of doing big data research and the problems of the so called ‘white method’. The paper introduces the following three types of approach, each with a different epistemological basis for researching racism in digital context: 1) using big data analytics to point out the dominant power relations and the dynamics of (...) racist discourse, 2) complementing big data with qualitative research and 3) revealing new logics of racism in datafied context. The paper contributes to critical data and critical race studies by enhancing the understanding of the possibilities and limitations of big data research. This study also highlights the importance of contextualisation and mixed methods for achieving a more nuanced comprehension of racism and discrimination on social media and in large datasets. (shrink)

Bioethics has developed approaches to address ethical issues in health care, similar to how technology ethics provides guidelines for ethical research on artificial intelligence, big data, and robotic applications. As these digital technologies are increasingly used in medicine, health care and public health, thus, it is plausible that the approaches of technology ethics have influenced bioethical research. Similar to the “empirical turn” in bioethics, which led to intense debates about appropriate moral theories, ethical frameworks and meta-ethics due to the (...) increased use of empirical methodologies from social sciences, the proliferation of health-related subtypes of technology ethics might have a comparable impact on current bioethical research. This systematic journal review analyses the reporting of ethical frameworks and non-empirical methods in argument-based research articles on digital technologies in medicine, health care and public health that have been published in high-impact bioethics journals. We focus on articles reporting non-empirical research in original contributions. Our aim is to describe currently used methods for the ethical analysis of ethical issues regarding the application of digital technologies in medicine, health care and public health. We confine our analysis to non-empirical methods because empirical methods have been well-researched elsewhere. Finally, we discuss our findings against the background of established methods for health technology assessment, the lack of a typology for non-empirical methods as well as conceptual and methodical change in bioethics. Our descriptive results may serve as a starting point for reflecting on whether current ethical frameworks and non-empirical methods are appropriate to research ethical issues deriving from the application of digital technologies in medicine, health care and public health. (shrink)

Digital technologies have changed nearly every aspect of our lives over the last two decades. As Warschauer, Zheng, and Park (2013, p. 825) put it, ‘there is little serious writing that is not done...

Since digital forensics becomes more and more popular, more and more attention has been paid to the originality and validity of data, and data preservation technology emerges as the times require. However, the current data preservation models and technologies are only the combination of cryptography technology, and there is a risk of being attacked and cracked. And in the process of data preservation, human participation is also needed, which may lead to data tampering. To solve problems given, this paper (...) presents a data preservation model based on blockchain and multidimensional hash. With the decentralization and smart contract characteristics of blockchain, data can be automatically preserved without human participation to form a branch chain of custody in the unit of case, and blockchain has good antiattack performance, which is the so-called 51% attack. Meanwhile, in order to solve the problem of data confusion and hard to query caused by the excessive number of cases, hash, cryptography, and timestamps are used to form a serialized main chain of custody. Because of the confliction problem of hash and judicial trial needs to absolutely guarantee the authenticity and validity of data, multidimensional hash is used to replace regular hash. In this way, the data preservation becomes an automatic, nonhuman-interventional process. Experiments have been carried out to show the security and effectiveness of the proposed model. (shrink)

A new method of observation is currently emerging in psychiatry, based on data collection and behavioral profiling of smartphone users. Numerical phenotyping is a paradigmatic example. This behavioral investigation method uses computerized measurement tools in order to collect characteristics of different psychiatric disorders. First, it is necessary to contextualize the emergence of these new methods and to question their promises and expectations. The international mental health research framework invites us to reflect on methodological issues and to draw conclusions from (...) certain impasses related to the clinical complexity of this field. From this contextualization, the investigation method relating to digital phenotyping can be questioned in order to identify some of its potentials. These new methods are also an opportunity to test psychoanalysis. It is then necessary to identify the elements of fruitful analysis that clinical experience and research in psychoanalysis have been able to deploy regarding the challenges of digital technology. An analysis of this theme's litterature shows that psychoanalysis facilitates a reflection on the psychological effects related to digital methods. It also shows how it can profit from the research potential offered by new technical tools, considering the progress that has been made over the past fifty years. This cross-fertilization of the potential and limitations of digital methods in mental health intervention in the context of theoretical issues at the international level invites us to take a resolutely non-reductionist position. In the field of research, psychoanalysis offers a specific perspective that can well be articulated to an epistemology of networks. Rather than aiming at a numerical phenotyping of patients according to the geneticists' model, the case formulation method appears to be a serious prerequisite to give a limited and specific place to the integration of smartphones in clinical investigation. (shrink)

The purpose of the article is to reveal the scientific approach that substantiates the impact of the creation of strategic alliances (SA) on the digital transformation of business and the development of their innovative power based on identified success factors. The aim was achieved using the following methods: abstract logic and typification (for classification of SA's success factors), generalization (to determine the peculiarities of SA's influence on their innovation development), analytical and ranking method (to determine the relationship between (...) the dynamics creating of SA and the degree of acceleration of digital transformation), expert evaluation (to determine the degree of influence of SA success factors by business areas). Implementing a business-integrated approach to understanding digital transformation will accelerate implementation of innovation and organizational change, identifies future prospects for market, customer and business relationships, highlighting the importance of researching the factors that ensure their success. An alternative vision of SA’s success factors is suggested, which are determined by the possibilities the organization of partnerships and organizational culture, integration of business sectors, compatibility of management goals, external relevance, obtaining synergies. Innovation is considered by the authors as an integration factor that reconciles all groups of SA success factors, giving them the necessary focus to solve business problems. The results of the study show that the creation of SA has a significant impact on accelerating and changes priority of digital transformation of business areas involved in strategic partnerships, and the impact of SA on the development of their innovation power is crucial. (shrink)

Digitalization of socio-cultural phenomena, including the education system, generates transformations of their qualitative characteristics and parameters, which requires research from the standpoint of methodological analysis and assessment of their possible consequences on humans and society. A significant element of the digital environment, in general, and educational, in particular, is the dialogue, the role of which has both cognitive and ideological, existential, social aspects. The purpose of the research is a philosophical analysis of the digital transformation of dialogue in (...) the context of the educational process, an assessment of its potential and impact on the individual. The research methodology has a complex, interdisciplinary character and is associated with the application of an existential approach to understanding the essence of dialogue, the theory of the development of individual thinking by L.S. Vygotsky, developed by the author of the theories of electronic culture and based on modern developments in the field of the introduction of digital tools in education. The study shows that dialogue in the digital learning environment becomes not so much a form of rapprochement, integration of subjects, as a form of autonomy, isolation, individuals, which changes the nature of learning and has social and existential consequences. This creates the need to transform the digital learning environment when using it from the position of supplementing it with ethical, socio-psychological and emotional components and support tools for the student. Based on the existential-axiological analysis, the positive and risky features of digital dialogue as one of the phenomena of electronic culture and online learning tools are revealed. The concept of digital dialogue in learning, the characteristics of its features, functions, role and influence on the learner in the digital environment are presented. The difficulties of dialogic learning characteristic of the digital environment are revealed, recommendations of a methodological and methodical nature for application in the education system are presented. (shrink)

This article, based on a presentation at the Future of the History of the Human Sciences workshop (2016), discusses some of the potential benefits and pitfalls of digital humanities (DH) tools and approaches for historians of the human sciences. It reviews some of the major approaches that form DH and draws on the author’s experience as part of a team creating a large DH resource to consider the complications presented by these.

-/- For all that digital methods—including network visualization, text analysis, and others—have begun to show extensive promise in philosophical contexts, a tension remains between two uses of those tools that have often been taken to be incompatible, or at least to engage in a kind of trade-off: the discovery of new hypotheses and the testing of already-formulated positions. This paper presents this basic distinction, then explores ways to resolve this tension with the help of two interdisciplinary case studies, (...) taken from preregistration in contemporary science and the debate over whig history in the history of science. These case studies, the paper argues, refocus our attention from a mutually exclusive testing/discovery binary to the relationship between our background data or philosophical views and the empirical generalizations that we might draw from the data. Finally, it develops a set of three challenges for philosophers and corresponding avenues for future work that will, it is hoped, allow us to better justify our use of these methods. (shrink)

This essay has its origin in a project on the globalization of science that rediscovered the wisdom of past research practices through the technology of the future. The main argument of this essay is that a convergence of digital video technologies with practices of social surveillance portends a methodological shift towards a new variety of qualitative methodology. Digital video is changing the way that students of the social world practice their craft, offering not just new ways of presenting (...) but new ways of practicing field research. We introduce concepts of the fluid wall and videoactive context to emphasize that the camera is an actor in the research process, and both behaviour and observation occur in both directions--in front of and behind the camera. While these practices and procedures are novel in some ways, they may also be viewed as old methods in the context of new instruments for recording as well as a new social understanding of these instruments. Since new technologies interact with the social context, the digital video methods we discuss in this essay are likely to become increasingly important for generations to come. We provide an overview of the use of digital video in research practice and present an account of the use of digital video methodology in Chile. (shrink)

Buddhism, the Internet and Digital Media: The Pixel in the Lotus explores Buddhist practice and teachings in an increasingly networked and digital era. Contributors consider the ways Buddhism plays a role and is present in digital media through a variety of methods including concrete case studies, ethnographic research, and content analysis, as well as interviews with practitioners and cyber-communities. In addition to considering Buddhism in the context of technologies such as virtual worlds, social media, and mobile (...) devices, authors ask how the Internet affects identity, authority and community, and what effect this might have on the development, proliferation, and perception of Buddhism in an online environment. Together, these essays make the case that studying contemporary online Buddhist practice can provide valuable insights into the shifting role religion plays in our constantly changing, mediated, hurried, and uncertain culture. (shrink)

Since the advent of accessible online computing, the digital divide existed, it exists today and it will exist tomorrow. It means that almost every aspect of life will be affected, particularly for those who are most vulnerable for whatever reason. It is important that research-informed action addresses this unacceptable state. In this special issue, a number of perspectives are taken to consider different aspects of the digital divide. In total, they illustrate the synergistic value of crossing disciplinary boundaries (...) and adopting a plethora of research methods and philosophies. Thus, the guest editors and authors of this special issue have created a notable contribution to the fight against the digital divide. (shrink)

As an essential direction for developing inclusive finance, digital financial inclusion breaks through the time and space constraints of inclusive finance development and has extensive connections between different regions. However, no research has modelled the network connections and the role and position of different digital financial inclusion development regions. This study constructed the spatial association network of China’s digital financial inclusion development and used the network analysis method and the quadratic assignment procedure method to study the structural (...) and locational properties and the influencing factors of the network. We found that although the network had a relatively low density, its connectivity and stability were excellent, and the network structure is not hierarchical; the centrality of some rapidly developing central and western provinces was greater than that of some developed eastern provinces; developed eastern provinces played a net spillover role, driving the development of digital financial inclusion in central and western provinces; and the spatial association was affected by the development level of the PC Internet and economy, the industrial structure, and the spatial adjacency. This study enriches the research on digital financial inclusion and provides a scientific basis for the formulation and implementation of policies to promote the further development of digital financial inclusion. (shrink)

Digital health includes applications for smartphones and smart speakers as well as more traditional ways to access health information electronically, such as through your health care provider's online web‐based patient portal. As the number of digital health offerings—such as smartphone health trackers and web‐based patient portals—grows, what benefit do ethics, or bioethics, perspectives bring to digital health product development? For starters, the field of bioethics is concerned about issues of social justice, including equitable benefit and minimization and (...) fair distribution of the burden of harms. Researchers who employ user‐centered design methods should consider what digital health applications and products would look like if issues like equity and accessibility were foregrounded throughout design and development. One group whose needs are often neglected in the design of digital health products is older adults. Many people anticipate that the digital divide among older adults will close as the current generation of tech‐savvy consumers ages up. But since technology is constantly evolving, this divide may be constantly recreated. As bioethics moves ever further into the technology era, I want it to be mindful of the creation of digital health care disparities. (shrink)

This study examines the role of digital technologies in building resilient communities, focusing on data collected during the pandemic. This research aims to explore the impact of digital technologies on community development, assess their effectiveness in enhancing community resilience, and identify key success factors. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach, including qualitative data collected through interviews and focus groups, a review of existing literature and case studies. Preliminary findings indicate that digital technologies have been crucial in (...) supporting community resilience, enabling virtual communication, remote access to resources, and community engagement. However, disparities in digital access and literacy have influenced their effectiveness. Addressing the digital divide and ensuring equitable access is crucial while providing ongoing support, capacity building, and community engagement. Digital technologies have demonstrated their potential to build resilient communities, particularly in times of crisis. (shrink)

We compared two digital humanities methods in the analysis of a contested scientific term. “Epigenetics” is as enigmatic as it is popular. Some authors argue that its meaning has diluted over time as this term has come to describe a widening range of entities and mechanisms (Haig, International Journal of Epidemiology 41:13–16, 2012). Others propose both a Waddingtonian “broad sense” and a mechanistic “narrow sense” definition to capture its various scientific uses (Stotz and Griffiths, History and Philosophy of (...) the Life Sciences 38:22, 2016). We evaluated these proposals by first replicating a recent analysis by (Linquist and Fullerton, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 42:137–154, 2021). We analyzed the 1100 most frequently cited abstracts on epigenetics across four disciplines: proximal biology, biomedicine, general biology, and evolution. Each abstract was coded for its heritability commitments (if any) and functional interpretation. A second study applied LDA topic modelling to the same corpus, thus providing a useful methodological comparison. The two methods converged on a discipline-relative ambiguity. Within such disciplines as biomedicine or molecular biology that focus on proximate mechanisms, “epigenetic(s)” refers to a range of molecular structures while specifying nothing in particular about their heritability. This proximal conception was primarily associated with the functions of gene regulation and disease. In contrast, a second relatively uncommon sense of “epigenetic(s)” is restricted to a small proportion of evolutionary abstracts. It refers to many of the same molecular structures, but regards them as trans-generationally inherited and associated with adaptive phenotypic plasticity. This finding underscores the benefit of digital tools in complementing traditional conceptual analysis. Philosophers should be cautious not to conflate the relatively uncommon evolutionary sense of epigenetics with the more widely used proximal conception. (shrink)

Although digital breast tomosynthesis has higher sensitivity than digital mammography and at least as high specificity, digital mammography remains the most common method for conducting mammographic screening. At the same time, mammography systems are now delivered “DBT-ready” and can be used for either digital mammography or digital breast tomosynthesis. In this paper, we ask whether it is ethically permissible to use such equipment for digital mammography, given its lower sensitivity. We argue it is not, (...) and that clinics are ethically required to use their DBTready equipment to screen with digital breast tomosynthesis whenever this is practically possible. Our argument relies on a comparison between digital breast tomosynthesis and a hypothesized improvement in the image quality of digital mammography. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the inadequacies of Indonesia's digital infrastructure for higher education, presenting a significant challenge. This article not only discusses the potential of digitalization in enhancing higher education but also addresses how it could undermine education quality. It identifies potential strategies to mitigate these issues. Employing a qualitative-explorative approach, this study gathers primary data from interviews and focus group discussions, complemented by secondary data from desk research. It concludes that digital methods aimed at lessening (...) the pandemic's impact on higher education have inadvertently compromised educational quality. This is attributed partly to users' limited proficiency with necessary technologies and partly to infrastructure deficiencies, such as internet and cellular connectivity, leading to substantial obstacles in online learning. The article advocates for the creation of a dedicated institution to support the surge in demand for digital technology and infrastructure necessitated by the pandemic. (shrink)

Digital materiality (digimat) proposes a set of basic principles for how we understand the world through digital processes. This short book sets out a methodical materialist understanding of digital technologies, where they come from, how they work, and what they do.

The improvement of modern computer technology to achieve fundamentally new indicators can be carried out on the basis of various approaches. One of such approaches is the application of methods of physical informatics. Therefore, this paper considers the support of ensuring “digital immortality” based on physical computer science methods. On the basis of Wiener random processes, measures are proposed to ensure the security of computer nodes to ensure “digital immortality”. The calculated ratios from physical informatics adapted (...) to determine the requirements for the design of information systems to ensure the digitalization of the brain are given. (shrink)

Digital transformation of traditional enterprises can better develop new customer relationships and help mitigate the business risk of their over-reliance on single-customer relationships. However, little research has been conducted on the internal mechanisms of how enterprise digitalization reshapes corporate customer relationships. In this manuscript, from the perspective of dynamic capability theory, we construct conceptual models of enterprise digital transformation, innovation capability, operational cost, and customer satisfaction, and explore the internal mechanisms of enterprise digital transformation to reduce the (...) dependence of enterprises on large customers. The model is empirically studied by obtaining data on the degree of digital transformation of enterprises through “search statistics” of keywords in the annual reports of Chinese listed companies during 2011–2019. This manuscript finds that digital transformation significantly reduces the concentration of large customers and has become a powerful driver of business model innovation in the digital economy, and this finding remains robust to the use of PSM and instrumental variable methods to address endogeneity. Digital transformation reduces firms’ dependence on large customers through three mechanisms: improving firms’ innovation capabilities, reducing firms’ operating costs, and increasing customer satisfaction. The impact of digital transformation on reducing the dependence of non-state enterprises on large customers is greater than that of state-owned enterprises; the implementation of digital transformation strategies is more helpful for enterprises that have active interactions with customers to reduce their customer concentration; and the reduction of customer concentration is greater for enterprises in regions with higher levels of digital development compared to those in regions with lower levels of digital development. The economic consequence test finds that digital transformation diversifies customer structure and reduces business risks. The analysis of the innovation effect and customer satisfaction effect on reducing the concentration of large customers of enterprisesby implementing digital transformation enriches and expands the dynamic capability theory and provides important insights for enterprises to diversify their customer structure. (shrink)

The so‐called “empirical turn” in bioethics gave rise to extensive theoretical and methodological debates and has significantly shaped the research landscape from two decades ago until the present day. Attentive observers of the evolution of the bioethical research field now notice a new trend towards the inclusion of data science methods for the treatment of ethical research questions. This new research domain of “digital bioethics” encompasses both studies replacing (or complementing) socio‐empirical research on bioethical topics (“empirical digital (...) bioethics”) and argumentative approaches towards normative questions in the healthcare domain (“argumentative digital bioethics”). This article draws on insights taken from the debate on the “empirical turn” for sounding out perspectives for the newly developing field of “digital bioethics.” We particularly discuss the disciplinary boundaries, chances and challenges, and potentially undesirable developments of the research field. The article closes with concrete suggestions on which debates need to be initiated and which measures need to be taken so that the path forward of “digital bioethics” will be a scientific success. (shrink)

This article introduces the methodology of the ‘Ontology Explorer’, a semantic method and JavaScript-based open-source tool to analyse data models underpinning information systems. The Ontology Explorer has been devised and developed by the authors, who recognized a need to compare data models collected in different formats and used by diverse systems. The Ontology Explorer is distinctive firstly because it supports analyses of information systems that are not immediately comparable and, secondly, because it systematically and quantitatively supports discursive analysis of ‘thin’ (...) data models – also by detecting differences and absences through comparison. When applied to data models underpinning systems for population management, the Ontology Explorer enables the apprehension of how people are ‘inscribed’ in information systems: which assumptions are made about them, and which possibilities are excluded by design. The Ontology Explorer thus constitutes a methodology to capture authorities’ own imaginaries of populations and the ‘scripts’ through which they enact actual people. Furthermore, the method allows the comparison of scripts from diverse authorities. This is exemplified by illustrating its functioning with information systems for population management deployed at the European border. Our approach integrates a number of insights from early infrastructure studies and extends their methods and analytical depth to account for contemporary data infrastructures. By doing so, we hope to trigger a systematic discussion on how to extend those early methodical innovations at the semantic level to contemporary developments in digital methods. (shrink)

Empirical philosophers of science aim to base their philosophical theories on observations of scientific practice. But since there is far too much science to observe it all, how can we form and test hypotheses about science that are sufficiently rigorous and broad in scope, while avoiding the pitfalls of bias and subjectivity in our methods? Part of the answer, we claim, lies in the computational tools of the digital humanities, which allow us to analyze large volumes of scientific (...) literature. Here we advocate for the use of these methods by addressing a number of large-scale, justificatory concerns—specifically, about the epistemic value of journal articles as evidence for what happens elsewhere in science, and about the ability of DH tools to extract this evidence. Far from ignoring the gap between scientific literature and the rest of scientific practice, effective use of DH tools requires critical reflection about these relationships. (shrink)