My talk for the Exploring Digital and Sensory Methods seminar at Brunel University, London, June 30th 2017

1. Oxford Internet Institute
The (im)possibility of capturing
young people’s socio-technical
ecosystems
Huw Davies
The Oxford Internet Institute
University of Oxford
@oiioxford

2. Oxford Internet Institute
Structure of this talk
• Why ecosystems?
• Why socio-technical?
• Possibilities
• Impossibilities
• Towards a solution or constructive framework

3. Oxford Internet Institute
Why ecosystems?
• Immersive, mutual dependency people &
systems
• Exhaling data:
Geo-location, social networks, gaming , peer-
to-peer communications,
• Absorbing data:
Platforms, hotspots, surveillance systems,
sensors & IofT

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Why socio-technical?
• Algorithms are socially constructed
• Platforms have intentionalities and values designed
into them - these values are often enacted in their
governance systems
• ‘Success’ of platforms requires deep
participation/alignment with people’s socially
situated psychological needs

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Possibilities
Unprecedented amount of social data available
Qualitative data at quantitative scales
New tools

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New Tools
NodeXL
Gephi
Python

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NodeXL

8. Oxford Internet Institute
Gephi

9. Oxford Internet Institute
Python

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Impossibilities
• Multimodal
• Multitasking
• Different levels of engagement
• Communities of practice
• Offline impacts online and vice versa
• Transgressive
• Ethics
• Political economy of research data

11. Oxford Internet Institute
Multimodal
• Smart phones
• Gaming PCs
• Laptops
• Tablets
• Consoles
• Smart TVs

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Multitasking
• Gaming
• Socialising
• Watching
• Listening to music
• Sharing/uploading
• Working

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Layers of digital engagement
Apps
(Closed propriety platforms - greatest opportunities
for corporations to capture & monetise user data)
Open Web
(Where educators want creativity to happen)
Dark Web

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Socialisers / Leisurists
PC Gamers
Non-
conformists
Pragmatists
Academic
conservatives
Propriety
corporate
compounds
Open
Web
Dark Web
Questionnaires
n = 113
Interviews
n = 46
Communities of Practice

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Differentiators
• Age
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Class
• Ethnicity
• Location
• Young people’s agency
• Constraints/opportunities

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“No, she loves going to concerts, like she’s going to Reading
Festival in a couple of weeks and I don’t know where Reading
Festival is but she’s going by herself and she’s younger than me
and well my parents are quite strict and then I see her going to
all these concerts by herself and well if she managed to meet up
with somebody that she’d never…well she’d spoken to but she’d
never actually seen in person then I don’t think I could ever do
that.”
Offline/Online

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Transgressive
• Hidden Wiki
• Alpha Bay
• Onion Scanner

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Ethics

19. Oxford Internet Institute
Ethics
BSA’s new guidelines

20. Oxford Internet Institute
Political Economy of Research Data
Datasift
Twitter

21. Oxford Internet Institute
Digital & social
ontologies & theories of
structure/agency
power/macro change
Qualitative
methods
(including digital
qual such
as interviews)
Digital methods to
capture the social at scale
Inward and outward critiques of
epistemologies & methods
Critiques of political
economy of digital/ platform
capitalism
E.g. Critical
Realism,
Bourdieu,
Foucault
Computer science, data
science, computational
social science
Digital
Sociology
Ethnographic
tradition
Reflexive sociolog
situational ethics.
& STS critique
Historically situated
sociology of
class/race/feminism
(not discrete)

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More info.
@BSADigitalSoc
@oiioxford