There are rich computational resources
available for students and staff at RUC, including UCloud, which gives access
to computing power in the cloud through a graphical interface. Jakub Klust from
RUC’s High Performance Computing (HPC) Centre visits the lab to give us a
hands-on introduction to how to get up and running. No special experience or
equipment is required, but bring your laptop. After Jakub’s intro, our own lab
member Jakob Bæk Kristensen will provide a demonstration case from his own
research so that everyone who is interested can test what it feels like to run
a data analysis via UCloud.
Program:
Introduction by Jakub: 15 minutes
Example case by Jakob: 15 minutes
Hands-on workshop with Q&A: 45 minutes
All welcome – please
share – no registration needed
Udviklingen af nye digitale muligheder for at indsamle forskningsdata er
ledsaget af en udvikling af nye tiltag og krav til beskyttelsen af data. Især
GDPR-lovgivningen er blevet vigtig at forstå, når det gælder forskningsdata med
personoplysninger. GDPR stiller krav om at alle offentlige organisationer, der behandler persondata, har en såkaldt
Data Protection Officer (DPO eller
databeskyttelsesrådgiver). I denne lab session får vi
besøg af RUC’s DPO, Peter Jakobsen, der fortæller om hvilke forpligtelser og
redskaber, vi har, når det gælder GDPR. Peter kommer desuden ind på
anmeldelsespligt til Rigsarkivet og på nogle retningslinjer for brug af AI, som
er under udvikling. Der vil være god tid til at stille spørgsmål og diskutere
forskellige forskningscases.
Alle forskere på RUC er velkomne. Skriv os en mail på digitalmedialab@ruc.dk, hvis du er i tvivl om arrangementet passer til dig.
I forbindelse med det kommende valg til Europa-Parlamentet, der i Danmark finder sted søndag den 9. juni, har labbet iværksat en indsamling af spidskandidaternes aktiviteter på Facebook. Formålet er at bidrage til debatten om det kommende EP-valg med månedlige analyser af valgkampen, som den udspiller sig på Danmarks mest anvendte sociale medie, Facebook.
During Spring 2024, we are offering a series of programming workshops targeted at beginners in the social sciences and humanities (both students and faculty welcome):
14. marts 2024 kl 13.00-14.30 i
Digital Media Lab, Roskilde Universitet (lokale 42.1-01)
Teknologier som machine learning og natural language processing giver nye muligheder for automatiseret analyse af store mængder ustruktureret data, herunder nyheder på dansk. Dagens oplæg præsenterer dugfriske forskningsresultater som bygger på sådanne computationelle metoder.
Mads Lang Sørensen (ADC Denmark)
præsenterer brugen af natural language processing til at undersøge hvordan
Facebook-brugere reagerer på forskelligt nyhedsindhold. Analysen er udført i
samarbejde med Ekstra Bladet i form af et speciale skrevet sammen med Tobias
Gårdhus. Specialet vandt Sociologisk Instituts (KU) årlige specialepris.
In an era
of closing APIs, data may instead be obtained via the users of digital
platforms. The cooperative consultancy firm, Analyse & Tal, has used data
donation methods to gauge how much personal information is stored by big tech.
The AlterUse research project at RUC deploys web tracking as another way of
involving users in data collection. Come and hear about two different methods
for user-involved data-making and the related ethical questions.
Presenters: Sarah Steinitz and Edin Lind Ikanovic, Analyse & Tal Eva Mayerhöffer and Jakob Bæk Kristensen, Roskilde University
All welcome – no registration needed – please share widely
Digital Media Lab public event 12 October 2023, 13.00-14.30, lokale 42.1-01, Roskilde Universitet
Danmarks Statistik skaber løbende nye, strukturerede data om
digitaliseringen i Danmark, der bl.a. kan fungere som et vigtigt ’reality
check’ for analyser af mere ustrukturerede data fra internettet. Vi får besøg
af to repræsentanter fra netop Danmarks Statistik, der fortæller om deres
arbejde på digitaliseringsområdet, og som også gerne vil have input fra
forskningsmiljøerne i forhold til vores behov og interesser fremadrettet.
Oplægsholdere: Agnes Tassy og Claus Werner Andersen,
Danmarks Statistik
All welcome – no registration needed – please share widely
Digital Media Lab event 20th April 2023, 11.30-12.45 in room 42.1-01, Roskilde University
Guest speaker: Anders Koed Madsen, Associate Professor & Head of Experiments, TANTLab, Aalborg University
An increasing number of scholars and students in the humanities and social sciences (SSH) are interested in what they can do with digital data and digital methods. At the same time, it can be challenging to pinpoint what skills must be honed to engage fruitfully with data from digital media. From coding via database management to visualisation and ethics, the requirements can seem wide-ranging and daunting. In this lab session, we set out to collectively understand and map the hands-on skill set that is key to get started with digital SSH. We have invited the Head of Experiments at TANTLab, Anders Koed Madsen, who has worked extensively with digital methods teaching and research. Anders will tell us about his experiences to get us started mapping the digital SSH skill set, which we can then continue to cultivate together in the Digital Media Lab at RUC.
As the extent to which digital technologies
already saturate societies is becoming apparent to growing numbers of global
citizens, the question of whether ubiquitous digitalization is desirable is
moving to the forefront of public debate: as we combat COVID-19, should contact
tracing apps and digital vaccination passports be mandatory for all citizens?
In the battle against crime, should facial recognition software be integrated
into surveillance equipment? Seeking to vanquish child abuse, should predictive
algorithms assist social workers’ case evaluation? These are but three of the
many issues that are being debated at present. And what about the (social)
media platforms on which these debates are conducted? Invoking freedom of
speech, should they remain unregulated? Seeking social justice, should hate
speech and incitement to violence be banned? As decision making and opinion
formation alike are becoming thoroughly digitalized, we need to discuss the
content of controversies about data and algorithms as well as the form of
datafied and algorithmic controversies.
A new research project aims to do just
that. Generously funded by the Villum and Velux Foundations, the Algorithms,
Data and Democracy-project will investigate issues of
public concern about digitalisation and datafication as these are shaped
by digital technologies and articulated in the digital
infrastructures of democracy. The aim is to understand current concerns and
challenges so as to be able to suggest ways in which the algorithmic
organisation of data can engage, enlighten and empower individual citizens and
democratic institutions. Turning potential crises of trust in democratic
societies as well as in novel technologies into opportunities for enhanced
digital democracy.
The ADD-project will achieve this aim through strong interdisciplinary
integration as well as disciplinary expertise. It brings together a team of researchers with unique
competences in computer science and technological research, the humanities and
the social sciences, building common theoretical and methodological approach in
the process of studying empirical cases. Further, the project integrates scientific research and public outreach by involving relevant
stakeholders and interested citizens from its outset and throughout the 10
years of its existence. At first, we will seek broad engagement, listening to concerns
and opinions of people and organizations. As we develop our research, we will seek
to enlighten the debate through the communication of results. Finally, we will
join in conversations that can empower citizens and inspire policy-makers to
instigate positive change.
Read more about the project on our website and follow it as it unfolds by subscribing to our
newsletter.
Article Author: Sander Andreas Schwartz, associate professor, IKH.
Picture from the public Facebook page of Facepager: https://www.facebook.com/facepagerpage
When researchers wish to collect data from social media platforms, they are often relying on the accessibility of the platform API, a system that allows a client to request for data and receive a structured response (See Lomborg and Bechman, 2014 for an explanation of how to utilize the API for research purposes). While the process of collecting data from the Facebook API was far from perfect (See Rieder et al., 2015), it was a rather efficient tool for big data collection. Recently, however, Facebook started to shut down the public access to the API leading some researchers to call this the APIcalypse (Bruns, 2019), while other argued that it was rather the “end of the Wild West” for social media research (Puschmann, 2019). In any case, collecting data from Facebook in through automated process have been difficult and uncertain over the last few years, leading the field into an uncertain future.
Recently there have been progress in this regard, as Facebook has provided various new options for data collection for research purposes. One option is the Crowdtangle solution, which allows researchers and other non-commerical actors to gain access to an officially supported platform for collection and analysis of Facebook and Instagram data. One of the major issues with this platform, is that it does not provide student access, making it virtually unusable for educational purpose. (if you are affiliated with a research team or project at RUC, you might be able to get access to our current subscription. Feel free to write us and ask).
But now we are happy to announce that there is in fact a publicly available tool for collecting public Facebook data that does not require any prior knowledge of programming. The tool is called Facepager, and this program will allow the collection of Facebook status updates form any public page as well as metadata about engagement metrics etc. The tool is not new as such, but after the APIcalypse as mention in the above, they have been granted public page access as the first publicly available research tool, making this a relatively new feature announced by the developer in late 2019 (link to tweet).
In order to get started, we recommend that you check out the walkthrough videos that they provide via their YouTube channel, starting with this: https://youtu.be/4f9yC4ug8ZU
In the coming months, we expect to explore Facepager more in detail, and potentially provide our own guide at DigitalMediaLab or even a workshop at the end of the semester. Please feel free to write us if you have any questions regarding this tool, and we shall do our best to answer your questions as we gain a deeper knowledge of the software.
Note: Facepager can actually be used to collect data from a variety API-based platforms as well as some web scraping even though Facebook is the primary feature.
References
Bruns, A. (2019). After the ‘APIcalypse’: Social media platforms and their fight against critical scholarly research. Information, Communication & Society, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1637447
Puschmann, C. (2019). An end to the wild west of social media research: A response to Axel Bruns. Information, Communication & Society, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1646300
Rieder, B., Abdulla, R., Poell, T., Woltering, R., & Zack, L. (2015). Data critique and analytical opportunities for very large Facebook Pages: Lessons learned from exploring “We are all Khaled Said.” Big Data & Society, 2(2), 205395171561498. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951715614980
