Kinder-Kurlanda
Professor of Digital Culture and Director of the Digital Age Research Center (D!ARC) at the University of Klagenfurt
Studied cultural anthropology, computer science, and history in Tübingen and Frankfurt (Germany) and received her PhD from Lancaster University (UK) in 2009.
Before coming to Klagenfurt, she was a team leader at the GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.
Works at the intersection between the social sciences and the computer sciences
Research interests: algorithms in everyday life and work, fair AI, datafication, data practices, data ethics, and computer games.
Current project: NoBIAS – Artificial Intelligence without Bias is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN).
ADDA4 TALK
Framing Digital Discourse: Infrastructures of Datafication and Automation
Digital discourse is facilitated and structured by complex algorithmic systems that gather, process, and analyze user data to create value. The use of social media, search engines, video streaming services, and mobile applications results in the creation of vast amounts of digital data, such as images, videos, and text. Additionally, digital interactions generate numerous other digital traces, including timestamps, locations, and other automatically collected data. This datafication has enabled the development of various business models that allow users to pay for services with data, knowingly or unknowingly. The emergence of new data economies has created a situation in which some entities derive value from other individuals' data, and participation is often predicated on providing data. The inability to access these proprietary data for research presents unique methodological, ethical, epistemological, and practical challenges in the study of digital spaces. At the same time, there is growing public awareness that the algorithmic curation of data, particularly on social media, is often problematic, with fake content and vulnerable individuals being targeted. Greater transparency of algorithms and data is needed, which necessitates additional research on digital discourse and its framing. This talk will discuss the ways in which researchers become involved in the creation of value out of data when studying digital discourse, as well as how their research influences the spaces that they examine. Furthermore, I will examine current developments in research data infrastructures that aim to address data inequality.
