DISTRACT - The Political Economy of Distraction in Digitized Denmark

01/10/2021

On the 22nd and 23rd of September, DISTRACT hosted an international seminar entitled Studying the Digital Backlash and was organized by DISTRACT researchers assistant professor Kristoffer Albris and PhD student Malene Hornstrup Jespersen, in collaboration with associate professor Stine Lomborg from the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen.

The aim of the seminar was bring together scholars from media and communication research, anthropology, computer/data science and other disciplines, that share an interest in what has in recent years come to be known as the "techlash" or "digital backlash".

You can read more about the workshop here: https://sodas.ku.dk/projects/distract/distract-news/studying-the-digital-backlash-international-seminar-organized-by-distract/

24/09/2021

DISTRACT researchers have published two new papers in the journal Big Data & Society. Both papers are online first, and will eventually become part of a special issue on "Machine Anthropology", edited by DISTRACT PI Morten Axel Pedersen.

The first is called "A view from anthropology: Should anthropologists fear the data machines?" and is written by Kristoffer Albris, Eva I Otto, Sofie L Astrupgaard, Emilie Munch Gregersen, Laura Skousgaard Jørgensen, Olivia Jørgensen, Clara Rosa Sandbye and Signe Schønning. Read it here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20539517211043655

The second is "A View from Data Science" written by Anna Sapienza and Sune Lehmann. Read it here: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20539517211040198

If you are an anthropologist wanting to use digital methods or programming as part of your research, where do you start? In this commentary, we discuss three wa...

29/08/2021

DISTRACT team member and assistant professor Kristoffer Albris was recently interviewed by the Danish newspaper Politiken on how people formed and sustained friendships during corona, building on the collective research effort of several DISTRACT researchers during the first lockdown in Copenhagen in 2020.

https://politiken.dk/indland/art8257484/Venskabet-er-på-vej-til-at-»overhale«-kærligheden

Read more about the DISTRACT study referred to here:
https://coronakrisen.github.io/post3.html

Coronakrisen har lært os noget om venskaber, som vi måske godt vidste i forvejen, men rent havde glemt, siger filosofiprofessor. I meningsmåling vurderer lige godt hver anden af de yngre, at deres venskaber er blevet vigtigere som følge af krisen.

27/08/2021

DISTRACT researchers study the annual politics and democracy festival 'The People's Meeting' (Folkemødet) on Bornholm as political attention laboratory.
This year, ten researchers from the DISTRACT project spent a week on Bornholm collecting qualitative and quantitative data from the event in collaboration with the nonprofit organization behind Folkemødet.

In a recent press release from Foreningen Folkemødet, PI Morten Axel Pedersen explains why studying Folkemødet is a unique opportunity for DISTRACT:

“Folkemødet is a kind of living laboratory for the study of political attention. With this project, we want to dive into the unique dataset we have collected from this year's meeting to gain new social science knowledge and improve the conditions for democratic public debate.”

Read more about this year's event and our collaboration here:

Efter corona-aflysningen i 2020 blev Folkemødet i år afholdt i et mindre, sektionsopdelt coronatilpasset format. Det betød krav om billetbestilling, coronapas, begrænset antal publikum og en række hygiejnetiltag. På de tre dage samledes 8.000 deltagere til politisk debat i Allinge inden for et...

30/06/2021

On the 11th of June, Olivier Driessens, Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen, visited DISTRACT and have a talk entitled "The in/visibility – in/attention complex: from collapse to intersection."

Abstract:

Although visibility and attention have become central categories in the social sciences, their interrelationship is unclear and requires further theoretical consideration. Some scholars discuss visibility in ways as if attention is naturally following—or not in the case of invisibility—, while others simply collapse both visibility and attention into either of those single categories. This leads to not only analytical confusion, but also a disregard of the different structures, agents and mechanisms that produce in/visibility and in/attention. Further, it produces sometimes rather simplistic linear thinking about the potential consequences of either visibility or attention, such as (mis)recognition and power. In response, I argue that visibility and attention are ontologically distinct categories that should be studied in tandem empirically. To improve the study of their varied interrelationships, I present the in/visibility-in/attention model. This model helps to map the different empirical manifestations at the nexus of in/visibility and in/attention and to take the dynamics of both in/visibility and in/attention equally seriously when studying a range of phenomena including privacy, distraction, provocation, celebrity or cancel culture.

27/06/2021

Talk by Odysseus Stone on attention and mindfulness

On the 28th of May 2021 Odysseus Stone gave a DISTRACT seminar talk entitled "What we care about when we care about attention: Insights from phenomenology and recent philosophy of attention"

Abstract:

Attention is something we care about. Two areas of public life where this fact about attention is currently particularly salient are a) the ongoing debates about the attention economy, and b) the explosion of interest in (and backlash against) mindfulness meditation. These debates are replete various normative claims about attention, claims that speak to the important role that attention plays in our lives. Such debates have, however, for the most part been carried out in relative isolation from philosophical reflection on attention. I show how reflections on the nature of attention from phenomenology (e.g., Gurwitsch, Merleau-Ponty), and from recent analytic philosophy (e.g., Watzl) help clarify the issues at stake. These authors share in rejecting various popular ways of thinking about attention—as information-pruning, as spotlight, as limited resource, etc.—and instead think of attention in terms of structuring psychological life. I spell out a few implications for the debates about mindfulness and the attention economy.

Odysseus Stone is a PhD fellow with the Center for Subjectivity research (CFS) at the University of Copenhagen.

25/06/2021

Data+ grants for DISTRACT researchers

The University of Copenhagen Data+ Pool is aimed at funding cross-disciplinary projects that integrate data science in new research areas. The second round of Data+ funding was handed out in late May and two of the funded projects include DISTRACT researchers.

DISTRACT Co-PI Anders Blok (Sociology and SODAS) and Vice-PI Kristoffer Albris (Anthropology and SODAS) have received funding for the project Risk Attention Ecologies: Mapping Socio-Symbolic Constellations of Climate and COVID-19 via Social Media Data

Assistant professor Hjalmar Bang Carlsen (Sociology and SODAS) has received funding together with Karina Kosiara Pedersen (Political Science) for the project Gendered Democratic Participation on Social Media

You can read more about the Data+ funding and see the full list of projects, which obtained funding here:

The university of Copenhagen Data+ Pool is aimed at funding cross-disciplinary projects that integrate data science in new research areas. The second round of Data+ funding has just been handed out, and two of the funded projects include DISTRACT researchers.

18/05/2021

On the 23rd of April, Paula Helm, post doc at the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities (IZEW) at the University of Tübingen, gave a DISTRACT seminar talk entitled "Problematic use and addictive design – Towards distributed responsibility".

Read more about the presentation here: https://sodas.ku.dk/projects/distract/distract-news/distract-seminar-with-paula-helm/

14/05/2021

On the 21st of April 2021, Kristoffer Albris presented ongoing work on digital detox that he has been doing with Malene Jespersen and Annika Isfeldt in the DISTRACT project.

The talk was entitled Selling the Promise of Presence: How Companies Promote Digital Disconnection and Detox Courses in Denmark, and presented the first analysis of data collected on danish companies that offer digital detox and disconnection courses and programs.

The talk was given to the research project DIGITOX, lead by Prof. Trine Syvertsen at Oslo University

11/05/2021

What is Data Worth?
On the 19th of April 2021, PhD fellow on the DISTRACT project Eva Iris Otto, gave a presentation to the Tech Commission organized by DJØF entitled "What is data worth?" (In Danish "Hvad er data værd?) The theme for the meeting in which the presentation took place was the relationship between technology, data and money. Eva gave a research based input to the discussion.

04/05/2021

On the 16th of April, Associate Professor of Tilburg University Mariek Vanden Abeele gave a DISTRACT seminar talk entitled:

Digital Wellbeing in a Culture of Ubiquitous Connectivity: Towards a Dynamic Pathway Model (DISCONNECT)

The project combines (1) traditional data sources (survey and interview data) with (2) behavioral data gathered via smartphone logging and (3) dynamic data on users’ momentary states and contexts gathered via mobile experience sampling. The DISCONNECT project is funded by an ERC Starting Grant.