Digital brains trusts, hashtag activism and disruption

Jen Quealy
Aug 25, 2017 · 4 min read

My attention this week is on exploring tech pathways that can unlock social science research, stimulated mostly by course readings around a twitter-based research project. The digital learning and research includes ‘bot’ creation as a student collaboration, with more traditional research methods and reflections on knowledge-creation.

These reflections also emanate from a radio-soundscape country drive, and later investigations through Twitter, the ‘Open Web’ and Blogs for concepts, theories and platforms, and much swerving between field-specific terms and approaches. The result unravels in a Deleuze-Guattari ‘rhizomatic’ way below, where I bring you three of my most reflexive finds. Leigh Alexander (2016), who performatively describes the term ‘disruption’ as “The Silicon Valley buzzword (with) the aftertaste of a sucked battery”, (LOL!) and has a research-relevant podcast “What would you put in a virtual museum?” as I am curating a virtual activist T-Shirt collection. I reference David Byrne (musician) and David Rushkoff (media theorist), and bring disparate thinkers together to reflexively stimulate a nutritious mash of ideas relevant to social science and digital inquiry.

But firstly, for the unaware, just what is the ‘open web’ and what does it mean for social science research? I found a blog from a bloke working with Mozilla in San Francisco. He should know and be able to explain this to the non-familials. He does. I like his simple definition of the Open Web as “the ability to openly do three kinds of things: 1. Publish content and applications on the web in open standards, 2. Code and implement the web standards that the content / apps depend on, and 3. Access and use content / code / web apps / implementation”. (Celik, 2010). So, it’s the language, the architecture, the pathways for sharing and curating knowledge, the openness and accessibility. Such research requires both technical skills and an understanding of knowledge creation and literacy.

I’m interested in research of the ‘hashtag activism’ kind, particularly in the twitter bias research project. We’ve created two ‘bot’ personalities for posting content, developing networks and data, which is just about ripe for analysis. We’ve had to reflexively critique (and ‘disrupt’) our biases and approaches (from names, gender allocation, data-driven and human behavioural-driven posts), within an ethical research framework.

Throughout the thinking and reading is the (everywhere) term ‘disruption’, it is ubiquitous in tech start-up fields. It may be a term and theory that needs questioning, but also applicable methodological frame for approaching digital social research. The very act of digital social research questions generations of traditional and ‘rooted’ (not in the slang sense) ontological and epistemological methodologies.

Country car-radio static prompted a push of the ‘seek’ button and revealed a most-pleasant auditory surprise, on ‘food for thought’ radio station (ABC Radio National). I found a dynamic digital world chat between a couple of fabulous humans. I love the pure luck of the right interview, at the right time, on just what I’m thinking about and stimulated a virtual mind-mapping, after my actual (and Google Earth / Maps guided) physical journey. (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/futuretense/has-rampant-capitalism-hijacked-the-promise-of-the-digital-age/7266210).

The discussion was a ‘pearler’, with ideas unravelled between Antony Funnell (presenter) and David Rushkoff (author and media theorist) based on Rushkoff’s book “Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How growth became the enemy of prosperity” (Rushkoff, 2017).

My research project on activism and slogan T-Shirts benefits from a digital research approach even though most of the phenomena occurred before the digital era. I’m looking at the coming together of messaging on T-Shirts in street campaigns, over the last 50 years, where protest, fashion, grassroots campaigns, self and social identity come together. I was driving down the coast to attend a chat event, between two old friends, environmentalist Bob Brown and journalist Peter Thompson; Bob liked the sound of my research and promised to have a look for a No Dams T-Shirt to add to my collection.

I finish with a blog by David Byrne, musician (Talking Heads). His opening is worth re-sharing here:

“I have a theory that much recent tech development and innovation over the last decade or so has had an unspoken overarching agenda — it has been about facilitating the need for LESS human interaction. It’s not a bug — it’s a feature. … What much of this technology seems to have in common is that it removes the need to deal with humans directly. The tech doesn’t claim or acknowledge this as its primary goal, but it seems to often be the consequence. I’m sort of thinking maybe it is the primary goal. There are so many ways imagination can be manifested in the technical sphere. Many are wonderful and seem like social goods, but allow me a little conspiracy mongering here — an awful lot of them have the consequence of lessening human interaction”.

One further note, there is some interesting discussion by Presner et al (2014) that challenges me as a social science researcher thus:

“the decolonialisation of knowledge (may be achieved by) strategically creating cracks and fissures in the most pervasive, ubiquitous knowledge platforms such as Google Earth / Maps and by dialetically tarrying with the negative of these platforms…this means enabling a multiplicity of storytelling and counter-mapping that foregrounds contestation and alternative histories.”

Thanks for the challenge all you thinkers and collaborators!

Footnotes and References … need a little tidying up!

A ‘pearler’ is Australian slang — http://modernisms.tripod.com/group/id15.html meaning excellent, pleasing, impressive or a great delivery (as in cricket).

Alexander, L., The Guardian, Why it’s time to retire ‘disruption’, Silicon Valley’s emptiest buzzword, extracted from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jan/11/disruption-silicon-valleys-buzzword

Alexander, L. Tech Podcast, What would you put in a virtual museum? Podcast link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/audio/2017/jun/16/artist-pippin-barr-virtual-museum-computer-game-visuals-artists-donald-judd-and-gregor-schneider-tech-podcast

Byrne, D., Website: http://davidbyrne.com/journal/eliminating-the-human

Celik, T., (2010) Blogpost: What is the Open Web http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open-web https://twitter.com/t

Deleuze, G and Guattari, F., Capitalism and Schizohrenia (1972–1980 Project) and definition of rhiszome theory extract: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/deleuze/

Presner, et al, 2014, Hypercities, file:///C:/Users/Jen/Desktop/1.WSUni/GDFutures/module%203%20journals%20reading/google%20earth%20paper%20GDF.pdf

Rushkoff, D., http://www.rushkoff.com/books/throwing-rocks-at-the-google-bus/

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Jen Quealy

Written by

MRes student, Apps, writing, facilitator, Landcare, environment, agriculture, NRM & RabbitScan & CSF app for builders, painters, architects & colourists

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