February 2023 - Members - lists.sigcis.org

16th CIFAS Field School in Ethnographic Research Methods in New York City
by Renzo Taddei 08 Feb '23

08 Feb '23

<members(a)lists.sigcis.org> *Apologies for cross-posting. Please disseminate this call to potentially interested parties. * *16th CIFAS Field School in Ethnographic Research Methods in New York City* Online: June 19 to 30, 2023 – 9 AM to 12 PM EDT On-site in New York City: July 24 to August 4, 2023 – 9 AM to 12 PM EDT The Comitas Institute for Anthropological Study (CIFAS) is pleased to announce the 16th CIFAS Field School in Ethnographic Research Methods. The course will take place in two sessions: one in an online format at the end of June and another in a face-to-face modality in New York City in July. The Field School aims to offer training in the foundations and practice of ethnographic methods. The faculty works closely with participants to identify the required field methods to address their academic or professional needs. The Field School is suitable for graduate and undergraduate students in social sciences and other fields of study that use qualitative approaches (such as education, communication, cultural studies, health, social work, human ecology, development studies, and consumer behavior, among others), applied social scientists, professionals, and researchers who have an interest in learning more about ethnographic methods and their applications. *Program:* - Foundations of ethnographic research - Theory and practice: social theories in the field - Ethics - Research design - Data collection techniques - Planning the logistics of field research - Digital ethnography - Ethnography in interface with Social Network Analysis and other trends in the field of the digital humanities - Ethnography in specific fields of activity (applied social sciences, health, social service, environmental studies, public policy design, business, and others) - Principles of organization and indexation of field data - Analyzing field data; qualitative analysis software packages: basic principles The total workload of the course is 30 hours. In this edition of the summer school, the option of earning credits is not available. Places are limited. The tuition fee is US$ 1,200. *Comitas Field School Fellowship:* a limited amount of fellowships are available to students from underrepresented minorities and low-income countries. See information on how to apply at the end of the application form. The application should be completed online *here* <http://cifas.us/field-school-registration-form/>. For more information, please see https://cifas.us/field-school/ or email us at fieldschool(a)cifas.us.

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CFP: Just Computation - Social and Historical Perspectives on Calculation in the Law
by Michael McGovern 07 Feb '23

07 Feb '23

Hello SIGCIS, Hopefully this CFP will be of interest to a few people on this list! Take care, Mikey McGovern -- Call for Papers Just Computation? Social and Historical Perspectives on Calculation in Law Harvard University Sept 8-9th, 2023 Datasets, algorithms, and statistical models are increasingly dominating legal spaces as instruments for rendering “just” decisions. Academic and popular critiques have shown that the application of such tools to delicate social problems exacerbates the very inequities they were meant to curb, whether in allocating welfare, evaluating credit, hiring, policing, and so on. Missing from this ongoing discussion, however, is a broader perspective on how computation has shaped—and been shaped by—law and governance across time and place. How have different legal orders made sense of numbers and new methods of calculation? How does the law shape the conditions under which numerical evidence is deemed legitimate? Why have political communities come to accept that fraught matters of justice might be resolved through recondite numbers, and how has that commitment evolved? At a time when the authority of quantitative tools is on the rise, what can courtroom contests tell us about the making of facts and their history? This conference provides an opportunity to grapple with these and other pressing questions by inquiring deeper into the history and politics of numbers as evidence, legal proof, policy instruments, and even tools for representing and contesting injustice. We will bring together scholars from a host of disciplines including the humanities and social sciences, data science and legal studies interested in how the quantification of social life and decision-making raises fundamental concerns about justice and fairness across different time periods and geographies. We believe that approaching these questions from a critical perspective can help invigorate and inform the vital discussions that have formed around “AI ethics” and “Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency” in computing systems. By convening a rich, interdisciplinary conversation on the relationship between law and computation, broadly construed, we hope to attract a range of scholars interested in honing their work for a special issue on these complicated and urgent issues. Contributors We seek papers from scholars from across the humanities and social sciences, as well as those coming from schools of information, policy, and law. Early career scholars in particular are encouraged to apply. While the workshop is oriented toward contemporary issues, it seeks to re-frame them by bringing different time periods and geographies to the table, so we are interested in submissions that consider these questions beyond the contemporary Global North. We will also accept co-authored papers. Publication This conference will be a platform for authors to workshop papers intended for a special issue of the interdisciplinary legal studies journal such as Law & Social Inquiry, whose editors have expressed interest. Though we intend to submit abstracts as a proposal for this journal, we remain open to alternatives and will discuss options over the course of the workshop. Accepted participants will be asked to submit a draft paper (max. 8000 words) and give a short presentation on their material for feedback from the group. Further deadlines and requirements will be specified depending on the format of the journal and the intended publication schedule. Please submit your abstracts to the conference only if you are willing to eventually submit your paper for a special issue. We will aim for final papers to be submitted by the end of the year 2023. Timeline March 24: Deadline to submit abstracts Mid-April: Decisions sent out for accepted abstracts End July: Deadline to submit final papers for internal circulations Sept 8-9: In-person workshop in Cambridge, MA End of 2023: Submit final papers Funding For presenters traveling from outside of the Boston area, we will guarantee travel stipends of $400, with the possibility of more funding and housing assistance as we secure more partnerships. Organizers Michael F. McGovern (mmcgovern(a)princeton.edu) Program in the History of Science | Princeton University Pariroo Rattan (pariroorattan(a)g.harvard.edu) Program in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School | Harvard University William Deringer (deringer(a)mit.edu) Program in Science, Technology, and Society | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Please submit your 400-word abstract (not including references) and a short bio of no more than 250 words by March 24th via this submission form <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeVfWKHN-WLyBOmeMLI6FSUgOCeq98OXxI…>. Authors whose papers are accepted will be expected to provide full paper drafts two weeks prior to the conference, which will be circulated to all conference participants. Please send your questions to justcomputation2023(a)gmail.com. We look forward to reading your submissions! -- Michael F. McGovern PhD Candidate, History of Science Princeton University mmcgovern(a)princeton.edu michaelfmcgovern.com

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New Project: Screenshot Histories
by Jacob Gaboury 06 Feb '23

06 Feb '23

Hi All! SIGCIS has been so instrumental to my work over the past decade that I wanted to begin a new project by reaching out to the list for thoughts and feedback on resources related to this topic. In short I am writing a history of screenshots, based loosely on a series of short articles <https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/series/screens-shot/> I wrote a few years ago. I'm interested in how we have historically remediated computing as visual output, that is, how we got pictures off our screens and into the world. This jumps off from some of my earlier work in Chapter 2 of *Image Objects* <https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262045032/image-objects/> on screen photography from the 1940s-1970s, but also moves into the development of WYSIWYG systems for print output at PARC in the 1970s, the use of CRT cameras for advertising and documentation <https://www.ebay.com/itm/275154558746> in the 1980s, and even more "vernacular" practices of screen documentation, such as children photographing video game high scores and taking screen selfies on beating a game. I also plan to approach contemporary screenshot cultures, such as the use of screenshots as "receipts" in texting and social media as well as screenshot practices in meme cultures <https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/deep-fried-memes>. The goal is to understand how we have arrived at a moment when so many of us are taking dozens, even hundreds of screenshots every week, and screenshots have become a kind of evidentiary object for cultures of use and individual actions taken via a computer. I'm on sabbatical this year planning archive trips, and would love any insight the list might have on where to look. I will be at the Computer History Museum to look at materials on the Alto and Apple Lisa, but would also love to hear from anyone that had experience with screen photography during their careers, or with thoughts on any objects, sites, or individuals I might look into or include. Happy to hear from any and everyone with thoughts! Feel free and reach out to me directly at: gaboury(a)berkeley.edu, and thank you! _Jacob -- Jacob Gaboury (he/him) Associate Professor of New Media History and Theory Dept. of Film & Media, University of California at Berkeley jacobgaboury.com/ <http://www.jacobgaboury.com/> *Image Objects: An Archaeology of Computer Graphics* (MIT Press, 2021) Winner of the 2022 Computer History Museum Prize https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/image-objects

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Internet Histories, Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2023 (Special Issue)
by Asger Harlung 06 Feb '23

06 Feb '23

To whom it may concern The editors of Internet Histories are pleased to announce that Internet Histories, Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2023 is complete, and available online. This is a special issue: "Between Marginal and Mainstream", Edited by Frédéric Clavert & Valérie Schafer. Two articles are open access. Below, please find the link to the issue, and an overview of contents. Please also consider submitting an article to the journal, more information about submission can be found here http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rint20&page=…. This information is sent out as BCC email to contacts and messageboards specified by the editors. It is not a newsletter, but a direct email with information that we hope will be of interest. Kind regards on behalf of the Internet Histories editorial team, Asger Harlung, Editorial Assistant, Internet Histories - - - - - Internet Histories, Volume 7, Issue 1, March 2023 https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rint20/7/1 Contents: Editorial: Between marginal and mainstream. Communities and ecosystems at stake Frédéric Clavert & Valérie Schafer Articles: >From healthy communities to toxic debates: Disqus’ changing ideas about comment moderation | Open Access Johannes Paßmann, Anne Helmond & Robert Jansma Demonstrating and negotiating the adoption of web design technologies: Cascading Style Sheets and the CSS Zen Garden | Open Access Derren Wilson, Saeed-Ul Hassan, Naif Radi Aljohani, Anna Visvizi & Raheel Nawaz The mainstreamisation of web related vocabulary: “Buzz” and “Trolls” in French media archives Gustavo Gomez-Mejia Interview: Remembering Netizens: an interview with Ronda Hauben, co-author of Netizens: on the history and impact of Usenet and the Internet (1997) Tristan Miller, Camille Paloque-Bergès & Avery Dame-Griff Book Review: Tumblr By Katrin Tiidenberg, Natalie Ann Hendry, and Crystal Abidin. Polity press: 2021 Alex Gekker

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A New Book
by James Cortada 04 Feb '23

04 Feb '23

A book I have written has just been published and thought it might be of interest to this community: *Birth of Modern Facts*. I explore how information has changed over the past 150-200 years by looking at these transformations through the lens of disciplines (e.g., computer science, library science, physics, economics, etc.) and their ecosystems. Every chapter includes discussions about the role of computing, too. The publisher (R&L) has offered a discount to individuals, for which I attach its coupon. Should you like to discuss my ideas in the book I am all ears, because I am still exploring this broad theme and one book cannot settle the issue in my mind. Regards, Jim -- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada(a)umn.edu 608-274-6382

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