David Moats

University of Helsinki | HY

Following concerns about social media's role in politics (fostering polarization and spreading disinformation), many activists and civic hackers have developed alternative digital democracy platforms for both deliberation and the representation of public opinion. But how are we to study the role of these platforms, and in particular, their algorith...

‘Our friends have been suggesting for quite a long time that we visit this wonderful city. […] They have a famous cathedral there, Salisbury Cathedral. […] It's famous for its clock. It's one of the oldest working clocks in the world.’ These words are from an interview with two Russian men on Russian state television news (Russia Today, RT) on 7 Ma...

What insights can the figure of the imposter provide into the social relations and cultural forms in the settings in which they emerge? How might ‘thinking with imposters’ be an important tool of analysis in the social sciences and humanities? This editorial essay sets the stage for working with these questions. It argues that the imposter is a fig...

It is often claimed that the rise of so called 'big data' and computationally advanced methods may exacerbate tensions between disciplines like data science and anthropology. This paper is an attempt to reflect on these possible tensions and their resolution, empirically. It contributes to a growing body of literature which observes interdisciplina...

There is a long history in science and technology studies (STS) of tracking problematic objects, such as controversies, matters of concern, and issues, using various digital tools. But what happens when public problems do not play out in these familiar ways? In this paper, we will think through the methodological implications of studying “problems”...

In recent years, many qualitative sociologists, anthropologists, and social theorists have critiqued the use of algorithms and other automated processes involved in data science on both epistemological and political grounds. Yet, it has proven difficult to bring these important insights into the practice of data science itself. We suggest that part...

Science and technology studies is famous for questioning conceptual and material boundaries by following controversies that cut across them. However, it has recently been argued that in research involving online platforms (Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), there are also more practical boundaries to negotiate that are created by the variable ava...

There is a long history in science and technology studies (STS) of tracking problematic objects, such as controversies, matters of concern, and issues, using various digital tools. But what happens when public problems do not play out in these familiar ways? In this paper, we will think through the methodological implications of studying “problems”...

Although the rapid growth of digital data and computationally advanced methods in the social sciences has in many ways exacerbated tensions between the so-called ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ approaches, it has also been provocatively argued that the ubiquity of digital data, particularly online data, finally allows for the reconciliation of the...

There have been many recent attempts to bring insights from science and technology studies (STS) into media disciplines, many of which associate this work with materiality and technology, while existing media theories are used to analyse the domain of media content and political economy. While this is a reasonable settlement, in this paper I will s...

This article assesses the usefulness for social media research of controversy analysis, an approach developed in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and related fields. We propose that this approach can help to address an important methodological problem in social media research, namely, the tension between social media as resource for social rese...

This paper discusses the implementation of methods of controversy analysis in social media research, and proposes that if project is to be successful, we need to address the tension between social media as a resource for social inquiry and as an empirical object in its own right (Thielmann, 2012; see also Hilgartner, 2000). Controversy analysis is...