Gina Neff

University of Cambridge | Cam · Centre for Research in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

In this article, we introduce the term "conjuration of algorithms" to describe how the tech industry uses the language of magic to shape people's perceptions of algorithms. We use the image of the magician as a metaphor for how the tech industry strategically deploys narrative devices to present their algorithms. After presenting a brief history of...

In this chapter we present theories and research findings from communication, media and design studies that have stemmed from James Gibson's highly influential affordance theory originating from the late 1970s. We do so from the lens of human-machine communication to determine how the field can benefit from the use of Gibson's work. Long before the...

Best practices for addressing the bias and inequality that may result from the automated collection, analysis, and distribution of large datasets. Human-centered data science is a new interdisciplinary field that draws from human-computer interaction, social science, statistics, and computational techniques. This book, written by founders of the f...

Adults’ digital self-tracking practices are relatively well studied, but these pre-existing models of digital self-tracking do not fit for how adolescents use these technologies. We apply the mechanisms-and-conditions framework of affordance theory to examine adolescents’ imagined affordances of self-tracking apps and devices. Based on qualitative...

The politics around data and power relations related to technologies for buildings is a new area for HCI. This paper proposes an agenda for linking new types of data to the challenge of sustainability, bringing human-centredness to a particular tool for design and engineering professionals, Building Information Modeling (BIM). BIM is the preferred...

People are increasingly subject to the tracking of data about them at their workplaces. Sensor tracking is used by organizations to generate data on the movement and interaction of their employees to monitor and manage workers, and yet this data also poses significant risks to individual employees who may face harms from such data, and from data er...

Highly energy efficient (HEE) buildings require a whole-system approach to building design. Scholars have suggested many tools, techniques, and processes to address the cross-disciplinary complexities of such an approach, but how these elements might be best combined to lead to better project outcomes is yet unknown. To address this, we surveyed ar...

Many people are involved in making large-scale data, and only some of these tasks are getting attention from researchers or recognition by managers re-organizing the data-driven workplace. New occupations like ‘data analyst’ and ‘data scientist’ have emerged in recent years, but much of the work that makes data analysis, interpretation and responsi...

The Internet and digital media are increasingly seen as having enormous potential for solving problems facing healthcare systems. This chapter traces emerging “digital health” uses and applications, focusing on the political economy of data. For many people, the ability to access their own data through social media and connect with people with simi...

Sex-for-rent schemes have emerged on online sites as rental options. We analyzed 583 advertisements that were posted on Craigslist in London and Los Angeles and interviewed 34 women who were or had been in these arrangements. This research yielded four key tensions: (1) navigating innuendo (mis)interpretation versus preserving arranged ambiguity, (...

Purpose Through the study of visualizations, virtual worlds and information exchange, the purpose of this paper is to reveal the complex connections between technology and the work of design and construction. The authors apply the sociotechnical view of technology and the ramifications this view has on successful use of technology in design and co...

What would data science look like if its key critics were engaged to help improve it, and how might critiques of data science improve with an approach that considers the day-to-day practices of data science? This article argues for scholars to bridge the conversations that seek to critique data science and those that seek to advance data science pr...

In 2016, Microsoft launched Tay, an experimental artificial intelligence chat bot. Learning from interactions with Twitter users, Tay was shut down after one day because of its obscene and inflammatory tweets. This article uses the case of Tay to re-examine theories of agency. How did users view the personality and actions of an artificial intellig...

What happens when people turn their everyday experience into data: an introduction to the essential ideas and key challenges of self-tracking. People keep track. In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Franklin kept charts of time spent and virtues lived up to. Today, people use technology to self-track: hours slept, steps taken, calories consumed, med...

The startups working in biosensing and self-tracking present a case to examine the role that power plays in the discursive process of framing new technologies. One frame often used for defining new data tools and services include “disruption,” or the perceived ability of technologies to upend the status quo of power within established industries or...

The study and analysis of large and complex data sets offer a wealth of insights in a variety of applications. Computational approaches provide researchers access to broad assemblages of data, but the insights extracted may lack the rich detail that qualitative approaches have brought to the understanding of sociotechnical phenomena. How do we pres...

Quantified Self (QS) is a group that coordinates a global set of in-person meetings for sharing personal experiences and experiments with self-tracking behaviours, moods, and activities. Through participation in US-based QS events and watching online QS presentations from around the globe, we identify a function of ambiguous valuation for supportin...

In this essay, we reconstruct a keyword for communication—affordance. Affordance, adopted from ecological psychology, is now widely used in technology studies, yet the term lacks a clear definition. This is especially problematic for scholars grappling with how to theorize the relationship between technology and sociality for complex socio-technica...

In this essay, we reconstruct a keyword for communication—affordance. Affordance, adopted from ecological psychology, is now widely used in technology studies, yet the term lacks a clear definition. This is especially problematic for scholars grappling with how to theorize the relationship between technology and sociality for complex socio-technica...

This article briefly reviews theories of materiality emerging in communication technology studies and organizational communication and then suggests three ways that journalism scholars might apply these theories to studies of news production. How journalists work, how journalism is shaped within newsrooms, the ways the news industry is changing, an...

Communication technologies increasingly mediate data exchanges rather than human communication. We propose the term data valences to describe the differences in expectations that people have for data across different social settings. Building on two years of interviews, observations, and participation in the communities of technology designers, cli...

Engineering teams collaborating in virtual environments face many technical, social and cultural challenges. In this paper we focus on distributed teams making joint unanticipated discoveries in virtual environments. We operationalize Dossick and Neff’s definition of “Messy Talk” as a process in which teams mutually discover issues, critically enga...

High-performance (HP) buildings are known for the holistic approach to design and construction project delivery, which encompasses various performance goals, such as energy efficiency, environmental considerations, and occupants' well-being. Compared to traditional buildings, HP projects require closer integration in the design and construction pro...

Data as a discursive concept in and around data-intensive health and wellness communities evokes multiple social values and social lives for data. Drawing on two years of qualitative, ethnographic observations, participation, and interviews in these communities, our work explores the gap between discourses of data, the practices with and around dat...

Culture Digitally is a collective of scholars, gathered by Tarleton Gillespie (Cornell University) and Hector Postigo (Temple University). With the generous funding of the National Science Foundation, the group supports scholarly inquiry into new media and cultural production through numerous projects, collaborations, a scholarly blog, and annual w...

Despite the transition from paper to digital media, hand-off of data and documents from construction to operations and facilities management is still cumbersome and often requires manual entry and duplication of effort. This paper presents initial findings from an ongoing pilot project that began in spring 2011 on a digital information exchange sta...

We studied the organizational practices around Building Information Modelling, or BIM, in inter-organizational collaborations among architects, engineers and construction professionals in order to theorize how communication supports technology adoption. Using ethnographic observation and one-on-one interviews with project participants, we observed...

A growing number of engineering firms are outsourcing complex design and construction work to international vendors. Due to the significant geographic distances that can separate project team members in global design networks, much of this work is executed in virtual teams. The challenges of working in geographically distributed networks have promp...

When can digital artefacts serve to bridge knowledge barriers across epistemic communities? There have been many studies of the roles new information and communication technologies play within organizations. In our study, we compare digital and non-digital methods of inter-organizational collaboration. Based on ethnographic fieldwork on three const...

Researchers have found successful collaboration that spans organizational boundaries enhances the productivity of the design and construction process. Researchers and practitioners alike argue using Building Information Modeling (BIM) should lead to tighter collaboration and closer communication among project participants working in cross-organizat...

Proponents claim that the adoption of building information modeling (BIM) will lead to greater efficiencies through increased collaboration. In this paper, we present research that examines the use of BIM technologies for mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire life safety systems (often referred to as MEP) coordination and how the introduction...

In this paper, we will report on how the introduction of a new technology, Building Information Models (BIM), is in the process of changing collaboration among architects, engineers, and builders. Using a multi-method study of comparative case studies and triangulation interviews, we have observed two building projects over an eight-month period, i...

Proponents of Building Information Modeling (or BIM) often claim that the adoption of these technologies will lead to greater efficiencies through increased collaboration. In this paper, we present findings from a research project that explores the use of BIM technologies for mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire life safety (known often colle...

This article compares the work of fashion models and “new media workers” (those who work in the relatively new medium of the Internet as dot-com workers) in order to highlight the processes of entrepreneurial labor in culture industries. Based on interviews and participant-observation in New York City, we trace how entrepreneurial labor becomes int...

A key challenge to understanding the eruption of globalization protest since the late 1990s is the lack of data on the protesters themselves. Although scholars have focused increasingly on these large protest events and the transnational social movements that play a role organizing them, information about the protesters remains scant. We address th...

This article examines the role of place and placemaking within cultural industries in the digital era. The data for this article are drawn from a data set of attendance at more than nine hundred social networking events over a six-year period in New York City’s Internet, or “new media,” industry. These data confirm that place became more,not less,i...

The work life in New York's Internet industry points to how employees have adapted to the new norms of flexible work. With an increased emphasis on entrepreneurialism at work–-including risk-taking and nonstandard work arrangements–-work norms in this industry result in individualist solutions to organizational and industrial uncertainty. This tren...

How has the process of technological change in the Internet era influenced the way we organize economic activities? In this chapter we discuss how information technologies foster the emergent design and user-driven design of websites and other online media, as well as products and organizations offline. A cycle of testing, feedback, and innovation...

Risk became risky on March 9, 2000. On that day, the Nasdaq composite index, comprised of the relative stock prices for the over 4,000 stocks traded on the exchange, passed the 5,000 mark—a remarkable feat considering its humble though arbitrary beginnings nearly thirty years prior when the National Association of Security Dealers set the index to...