It’s been a long time between drinks my friends and I’ve been a busy bee juggling my multiple hats. Over the last few months, it’s been an exciting ride that has seen me co-convening another corker salon with my Parallel Fascinations crew, where our conversationalist, Rafael Moya Castro, tied in interdisciplinary collaboration, wind tunnels and poetry. That was truly food for the soul.
Speaking of food for the soul, most recently, I attended a conference at Goldsmiths University with the Social Media and Society crew. For the isolated practitioner of the digital domain, it was incredibly nourishing to be amongst people wrestling with the same questions of digital methods, ethics considerations, the changing T&Cs of social media platforms and what makes for interesting research amongst this wealth of data possibilities. Here’s the abstract, recording and the slides for my presentation on online drug discussion, big data analysis and social change.
But really, I’ve finally returned to my blog to put out a call from my new role in joining the Nexus editing team for TASA.
I’ve joined the Nexus editing team for TASA and would like to let our Digital Sociologies network know that I am currently looking for EOIs to write short pieces (500-1000 words) on the following topics:
1. What training is/ or could be done for PhD students on using digital methods?
- (For supervisors) From your experience and what you see happening in the field, what are some of the key methods and skills PhD students should be including in their approaches?
- (For postgraduate students) What digital methods and types of content (i.e. software spaces, algorithms, relational data from social media, textual content from forum or blog analysis), have you become interested in pursuing to answer your research questions?
- (For practitioners) what training needs have you identified in the workplace that could become a part of the education pathway for researchers and practitioners drawing on this field?
2. What are the ethics considerations for using digital methods?
(For researchers and for postgraduate students)
- What are some particular considerations that you have had to address in your own research and how did you address them?
- What body of literature do you draw on to assist you with these questions?
For practitioners
- What roadblocks and challenges have you experienced when working with this data in a professional context (transparency and privacy considerations).
3. What do supervisors need to know?
- (for supervisors) what are the questions and considerations you have encountered from PhD students wishing to conduct research using digital methods and questions that investigate our digital lives?
- (for post graduates) What do you wish your supervisor could provide in terms of support or mentorship when you have sought to do research in the digital domain (through methods or questions of our digital lives)?
The submission timeline for these pieces would be for 15th September and I am happy to work with people to assist them to consider the digital in their sociological approaches and hit the writing style appropriate for our diverse audience.
I will be working with the editorial team to look at different publishing models that allow us to make Nexus an experimental platform for transparent peer review process, open access content, and covering trending topics in the discipline, critical commentary on the higher education context, alongside spaces for deeper thought pieces, theoretical exploration and sociological consideration of current topics in the public eye.
I look forward to engagement on this opportunity and hope you will be able to circulate it to people who are interested!
On another note, I’ve finally had ethics clearance to begin my research collaboration with scholars at RMIT into an ethnography of Bitcoin use. This project will be a slow burner which I will write more about when brain space and time is more conducive. However, here’s the paper we wrote scoping out the research domain for this to keep you busy until I get to this. It’s open access, but you’ll have to make a log in identity first to access the article (sorry about that hoop, but you will get there).
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