Datafied Organisation – between big promises and mundane fixes. Perspectives from critical data and algorithm studies

Critical data and algorithm studies has become an important antidote to the overblown promises around data and algorithms. This emerging field seeks to explore the relationships between the social and the technical in more nuanced ways than the dominant narratives shaped by the digital economy, whose business is based on selling technology that is supposedly always new, smart, more convenient and innovative. Indeed, in popular discourse the words data and algorithm tend to be equated with constant progress, better knowledge that seems unlimited as well as black boxed, and nearly uncontrollable potentials of control. This way of deterministic thinking about our media technologies, about their algorithmic structures and data organization, neglects both historical contexts and material aspects, and furthermore ignores the human labor as well as the industry behind it.    

In this seminar, we offer alternative perspectives and in-depth analysis of the organization of the production and productiveness of data and algorithms. We aim to bring back into the picture historical contexts and trajectories, socio-material practices and questions about the broader social and political stakes of data promises. This ephemera workshop is an invitation to enrich such conversation. Please join us!

Program (20 minutes for presentation, 20 minutes for discussion)

 
13.00-13.20: Coffee and catching up!

 
13.20-13.30: Welcome 

 
13.30-14.10: Lisa Reutter (University of Copenhagen): Datafication of public administration in the Nordics: An introduction 

 
14.20-15.00: Maja-Lee Voigt and Elena Römer (Leuphana University of Lüneburg): The City is Not Your Business - How Tech Companies are Incorporating Public Infrastructures and how 'Haltung' can be the driving force for (non-)desirable futures.

 
15.00-15.30: Break

 
15.30-16.10: Tanja Wiehn (University of Copenhagen): Synthetic Data: New Promises – New Pitfalls?

 
16.20-17.00: Nick Butler (Stockholm University) and Emilie Hesselbo (Lund University): Leading by Algorithm: Reconfiguring the nature of leadership in digitalized work environments

 
18.00/18.30: Dinner (tba)