Internet Subcultures (master course)

In my “Internet Subcultures” course students learn to make sense of a variety of cultural phenomena developing in the fringes of the Internet. In the course, we discuss a number of classic and contemporary theories of differentiation and cultural evolution, and the influence that the media infrastructures have on these dynamics. We use these conceptual tools to understand weird and online-specific Internet phenomena.

See the course page at the University of Geneva

Read the syllabus of the course

Digital Methods (master course)

The course introduces its students to a palette of social research methods based on the repurposing of a variety of data, tools and computational techniques unique to the modern web and freely available online. The panorama of digital methods being too vast and rich to be taught in a single course, this teaching aims at breadth rather than depth. It deliberately browses through a multiplicity of tools and approaches, but does not delve into any of them. It does, however, provide students with the conceptual and technical foundations necessary to independently explore the details of the methods that are most interesting to them.

See the course page at the University of Geneva

Read the syllabus of the course

Data Inquiries

I am thrilled to announce the publication of the website of the new Data Inquiries initiative, which I wish to develop with the other members of the Public Data Lab.

Data Inquiries proposes a new way to do computational social science and to teach data literacy. It suggests, in particular, to shift the attention away from data and technologies and to the social and political implications of data science.

Data Inquiries draw attention to the social life of data both conceptually and practically:

Conceptually, it proposes to connect the practice and teaching of data science to the transdisciplinary literature on critical data studies and its description of the implicit assumptions and side effects of data infrastructures.

Practically, it suggests experimenting and teaching data science not in abstract challenges, but in actual social situations, that is in collaboration with civil society groups using data in their projects.

Discover Data Inquiries

Smartphone Journalism

Proposal for a potential course on the promises and risks of smartphone journalism

See the slides

Writing with Data Workshop

This workshop, which I’ve taught at the University of Amsterdam and at the Australian National University, is meant to provide a collective and hands-on reflection on the techniques of academic writing, with a specific focus on writing for the social sciences. It is explicitly inspired by the “writing workshops” organised by Howard Becker in Chicago and Bruno Latour in Paris, but adapts such model to the writing of essays that are based on the analysis of data.

The workshop considers all types of writing (visual as well as textual) and explores their role not only in the presentation of findings but also in the staging of the research protocol. Writing with data is the art (or rather the artisanship) of crafting coherence between the conceptualisation, the operationalisation and the presentation of a scientific research.

Read the workshop’s presentation

Teaching Infrastructures Breaching through Data journalism and Data Activism

Conference of the European Association of Studies of Science and Technology, 25-28 July, Lancaster UK

Far from being neutral, data generate political effects at every stage of their production, cleaning, analysis and presentation. Such effects are sometimes manifest, for example in the use of demographic statistics for the justification of public governance, and sometimes, subtler for example in the way we classify knowledge in our libraries.

While the bias of the data is easy to proclaim, it is more difficult to observe and even more to teach. Information systems hide their political attachments, not necessarily maliciously, but simply because such opacity makes them more efficient in their tasks of knowledge management. It would be impossible to search a piece of information on the Web if, every time, we had to discuss Google’s business model or to wonder why its algorithms privilege some results. Yet, data infrastructures have fundamentals political consequences that must be part of any curriculum related to digital technologies.

Data activism arises precisely from the desire to expose the power asymmetries inherent to information systems. It seeks to promote access to data; to investigate the conditions of their production; to explain the constraints they generate; to propose alternative ways of redistributing their social consequences. Precisely because it raises awareness about the political dimension of digital technologies, the practice of data activism can be beneficial to make students sensitive to the effects of the sociotechnical infrastructures.

In this contribution we discuss the benefits and the difficulties of teaching data activism and data journalism drawing on the experience of a course at ENS Lyon France and at King’s College London.

Download the slides of the presentation

Data Activism course @ ENS Lyon

This course I have taught, with Axel Meunier, at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Lyon intends to train students in the politics of information through a data activism project – the actual intervention in a public debate through the mobilization of digital data and the collaboration with the actors engaged in this field

Far from being neutral, the data generate political effects at every stage of their production, cleaning, analysis and presentation. But while the bias of the data is easy to proclaim, it is more difficult to observe. Information systems hide their political attachments, not necessarily maliciously, but simply because this allows them to be more efficient in their tasks of knowledge and coordination. It would be impossible to search a page on the Web if we had to discuss every time the business model of Google or wonder why his algorithms privilege some results rather than others. Yet, data infrastructures have the fundamentals political consequences that digital scholars cannot ignore.

Data activism arises precisely from the desire to expose (and if possible re-balance) the power asymmetries inherent to information systems. It seeks to promote access to data; to investigate the conditions of their production; to explain the constraints they generate; propose alternative ways of redistributing their social consequences.

See the official website of the course

See the online log of our work

A Data Journalism Hackathon at King’s College London

djsprint_small

On the 2nd of December, 2016, in collaboration with Open Knowledge International and the EU project SoBigData, the students of my Data Journalism Course (KCL Data Journalism Course) at King’s College, will have the chance to participate to a one-day hands-on data journalism workshop.

During the workshop, they will work with data experts, journalists and activists from various civil society organisations to collect, analyse and visualise data on international taxation (taxjustice.net); clinical trials (opentrials.net); human rights violations (decoders.amnesty.org); natural resources extraction (resourcegovernance.org)

Read more about the event

Data Journalism at King’s College

DataJournalism

The syllabus of the Data Journalism course that I am teaching with Liliana Bounegru at King’s College London

Download the syllabus

Ocean Fertilisation Controversy

OceanFertilisation

The best controversy atlas in my 2013/14 Controversy Mapping course. It presents the debate around Ocean Iron Fertilisation as a citizen conference:

See the atlas

The ‘recovered memories’ controversy

FalseMemories

One of the best video of my students in the Controversy Mapping Course in 2014 (in French however).

Watch the video

The nk603 maize controversy

MaisSeralini

One of the best video of my students in the Controversy Mapping Course in 2014 (in French however).

Watch the video

Cartografia de Controversias

Controversias

A week-long intensive course in controversy mapping that I gave at the Medialab of the Universitade Federale de Rio de Janeiro

See the video of the introductory conference

ASP The Construction of Innovation Networks

ASP

In 2012 and 2013, I have been responsible for organizing the module on Innovation Networks at the the Alta Scuola Politecnica gathering the 150 best students of the Politecnico di Milano and Politecnico di Torino. In a week-long intensive workshop, the students learn about Science and Technology Studies and Digital Methods perform the analysis of an innovation network.

See one of the lessons that I have given at ASP

Course of Data Journalism

data_journalism

In collaboration with the data journalist Nicolas Kayser-Brill, I have organize one week intensive course of data journalism for the students of the Ecole de Journalisme de Sciences Po.

See the works of my students

Controversies Design

ControversyDesign

Since 2010, I have been teaching Controversy Mapping and Science and Technology Studies (25h course) in the design workshop of Density Design at the University of the Politecnico of Milano.

See the webpage of the course in 2010, 2011, 2012
See the videos produced by the students

Controversy Mapping

ControversyArchive

Among other things, at Sciences Po I am responsible for coordinating and teaching the courses of Controversy Mapping. Controversy Mapping has been invented by Bruno Latour some twenty years ago as as a method to train students in the observation and description of sociotechnical debates. Since then, the method has evolved considerably and has been implemented by several universities all around the World (Paris, Copenhagen, Milan, Manchester, Amsterdam, Liège, Lausanne, Padova, Trento, Buenos Aires…).

See the archive of the best work of the students of the course

Degrowth Controversy


One of the best websites realized in 2011 by the students of my Controversy Mapping course.

Click here to see the website.

Global Licence Controversy


One of the best websites realized in 2011 by the students of my Controversy Mapping course.

Click here to see the website.