DATA FUTURES

SODAS Inaugural Lecture Series 2017

Data has become part of the basic fabric of social life in many different ways. What sorts of questions do we need to start asking in order to understand, prepare for, and shape our futures with and through digital data?

The Centre for Social Data Science (SODAS) at the University of Copenhagen is convening its inaugural Lecture Series on the theme of Data Futures. Speakers from different disciplines are asked to reflect on the most pressing questions for contemporary society as we face futures living with and through data. The lectures will be aimed at an interdisciplinary audience - all welcome.

Lectures will take place from 11.00am - 12.30.

21 April 2017 - Anders Kristian Munk

Participatory Data Design

Anders Kristian Munk

Anders Kristian Munk. Aalborg University, Department of Learning and Philosophy

At the face of it, user-driven and data-driven approaches can seem anathema to one another. However, recent experiments with user involvement in data intensive projects suggest otherwise.

From datafication to analysis and visualisation, social data work involves choices that can, in principle, be opened up to a broader cast of participants. The question is under what circumstances such participation makes sense. What do we expect to achieve from it and how do we go about achieving it? Experiences with data sprints and other participatory formats has shown that participation can be a way to ensure relevant user input and thus more robust knowledge claims, a way to forge ownership and legitimacy with a particular group of actors, a way to give stakeholders first hand experience with the constraints and limitations of a data project, or a combination of the above. Depending on the objective, and the affordances of the tools and datasets available, different problems and challenges present themselves. I discuss these under the broad heading of Participatory Data Design.

Read more about Anders Kristian Munk here.