Slides séminaire de Jérôme Denis : Villes, infrastructures et #opendata (EHESS, 18 janv. 2012)
Dans le cadre de mon séminaire EHESS Étudier les cultures du numérique : approches théoriques et empiriques, j’ai eu le plaisir d’accueillir pour une séance sur ville, infrastructure et données Jérôme Denis, sociologue, enseignant-chercheur à Télécom ParisTech, auteur (avec David Pontille) de l’excellent Petite sociologie de la signalétique (Presses de l’Ecole des mines, 2010) et co-animateur du blog Scriptopolis. Voici les slides de son intervention.
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The global #occupy movement so far: a map (and a database)
The Occupy movement has been in the front of the scene all throughout 2011, winning media attention, taking over where the Arab Spring and the Indignados left off and ideally avenging the Tea Party instrumental use of all the self-organization/non-hierarchical discourse. So, at the end of the year, it’s time for a little review.
Members of an Occupy-affiliated group, We All Occupy, have been collecting resources from activists from all over the world. The result: a listing of over 1300 geocoded Occupy locations, with websites, Facebook, and Twitter URLs where possible. A (still to be completed) database for all of you activists, data/citizen journalists. And of course, a global interactive map available on Mapbox for your viewing pleasure!
[Vidéo] Insurrections augmentées : l’impact des médias sociaux sur les émeutes (updated 12/11/11)
Le samedi 5 novembre 2011, l’association Ars Industrialis a organisé au Centre Pompidou un séminaire sur « La guerre civile numérique ». Le rencontre visait à identifier les bonnes questions relatives à ce thème, qui fait couler beaucoup d’encre depuis quelques temps (v. par ex. le livre de Paul Jorion). [Update 13 novembre 2011: la vidéo de ma présentation + les diapos sont finalement en ligne!]. La présentation est basée sur la recherche effectuée avec Paola Tubaro sur les émeutes britanniques de 2011.
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Nouveau poste : maître de conférences à TELECOM ParisTech !
Chères toutes, chers tous,
La rentrée 2011 est porteuse d’une excellente nouvelle : à compter du 1er septembre, je rejoins le département SES de Télécom ParisTech en qualité de maître de conférences en Digital Humanities ! #yeah
C’est un peu un scoop, même si cet été la nouvelle avait circulé de manière oblique sur Internet à l’occasion de la parution de notre étude sur les émeutes britanniques (par ex. ici, ici ou ici). Pour ceux qui ont suivi mes recherches des dernières années, mon rapprochement aux humanités numériques n’est pas une surprise. J’ai été l’un des signataires du manifeste ThatCamp 2010 et j’ai aussi participé aux travaux du séminaire EHESS Digital Humanities, les transformations numériques du rapport aux savoirs de Pierre Mounier et Marin Dacos. Je ne cesse pas pourtant d’être un sociologue : après tout, les DH sont une big tent : une discipline fédératrice, un domaine de recherche à multiples entrées qui convoque surtout une approche innovante des SHS réconciliant la recherche et la demande sociale.
‘Blame it on Black Culture’: Race, Ethnicity, and Bogus Explanations of UK Riots
by Antonio A. Casilli and Paola Tubaro
During the last week several voices of the international blogosphere have been discussing our study on the impact of social media censorship during the August 2011 UK Riots. As you know if you have been reading our blogs, our work was based on computational methods and aimed at showing possible scenarios of civil violence. We were adamant about the fact that our intention is to provide policy-making tools and a theoretical framework, while data collection about the riots and their possible social determinants is pending.
The hunger for data produces spurious correlations
A few of our readers have been particularly concerned with the fact that, for the time being, evidence is lacking. A particularly virulent one dismissed, in the comments section of a US blog reviewing our research, our results as unsubstantiated « opinions cloaked in technology ». In the current climate of ideological polarization, such attacks are to be considered – albeit epistemologically enticing – politically motivated. As is some of the « swift evidence » the Internet is regurgitating these days.
Exhibit A: the HumStats Blog, sprung from nothing on August 15th 2011, with only one post suggestively titled ’2011 England Riots: Statistics of Ethnicity’: a lengthy statistical tirade highlighting a « strong correlation » between the occurrence of riots and black population (unemployed black population, to be precise) while discarding other socio-economic status indicators as not significant. (The blogger’s profile ‘HumStats’ is frugal to say the least. All we know is that this person is somehow statistics-savvy, but we have no indication as to the blogger’s gender or ethnic background).
Now, this kind of exercises in descriptive statistics is simple to grasp for everyone. Just having a look at summaries such as this one, taken from the blog post in question, an inexperienced reader might be drawn to think that the correlation is there, and – as in many a mind correlation implies causation – bang!… the Black and Afro-Caribbean population of England is automatically to blame for the recent wave of civil violence. What’s more, class conflict is nothing and, apparently, matters of social justice count for peanuts.
Is a social media-fuelled uprising the worst case scenario? Elements for a sociology of UK riots
By Antonio A. Casilli & Paola Tubaro. French version provided by OWNI.fr.
 “It's time we heard a little bit less about the economic and sociological justifications for what is in my view nothing less than wanton criminality”. (Boris Johnson, public speech London, Aug 9, 2011) |
 “We are not social scientists. We have to deal with urgent situations” (Paul McKeever, Police Federation Chairman, SkyNews Aug 11, 2011) |
 “Nowadays sabotaging the social machine involves reappropriating and reinventing the ways of interrupting its networks”. (The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection, Semiotext(e), 2009, p. 112) |
This is the first of a series of joint posts of Bodyspacesociety + Paola Tubaro’s Blog. You are kindly invited to visit both websites, featuring plenty of interesting stuff.
Why social media bring democracy to developing countries and anarchy to rich ones?
O sublime hypocrisy of European mainstream media! The same technologies that a few months ago were glorified for single-handedly bringing down dictators during the Arab Spring, are now at the core of an unprecedented moral panic for their alleged role in fuelling UK August 2011 riots. In a recent post, Christian Fuchs rightly maintains:
And, o! exquisite refinement in the ancient art of double standard: the same conservative press that indignantly deplored dictators’ censorship of online communication, now call for plain suppression of entire telecommunication networks – as unashamedly exemplified by this piece in the Daily Mail.
Fact is, moral panic about social media is the specular reflection of the acritical enthusiasm about these very same technologies. They both spring from the same technological determinism that acclaims new gimmicks and buzzwords to smooth away the economic and social roots of unrest.
Having said that, what can we, as social scientists, say about the role of social media in assisting or even encouraging widespread political conflict? Very little indeed, insofar as we do not have data on actual social media use and traffic during riots. It would take months to gather that data – and who can wait for so long in a media environment that spits out “quick and dirty” analyses by the hour?
Parution de « Cultures du numérique » (Ed. du Seuil)
Le voilà entre mes main : le premier exemplaire de « Cultures du numérique » que j’ai dirigé et dont j’ai le plaisir de vous annoncer la parution aux Editions du Seuil.
Il s’agit du numéro 88 de la revue Communications, un numéro spécial qui marque le cinquante ans de cette glorieuse publication fondée en 1961 par Roland Barthes et Edgar Morin. Nous en sommes tous très fiers, et à juste titre. Ce numéro est appelé à devenir un ouvrage de référence pour les étudiants et les chercheurs qui – en nombre croissant – s’intéressent au Web et à ses conséquences sociétales, culturelles, politiques.
« Cultures du numérique » propose un panorama des études francophones sur les usages des technologies de l’information et de la communication. Vingt-trois chercheurs, venant des domaines les plus disparates, ont participé : psychologues, philosophes, médecins, économistes, sociologues, experts de digital humanities et de sciences de la communication.
Voilà la table des matières complète, Read more
Avatar activism and the « survival of the mediated » hypothesis
By now, you’re all way too familiar with the Egyptian Facebook activism. And everybody and his sister has spent the last year-and-a-half discussing how wrong was Malcolm Gladwell in dismissing Moldovan Twitter activism. And millions of you have smiled at Gaddafi’s crazy rant against Tunisian Wikileaks activism. But I’m sure the notion of Avatar activism appeals to a more restricted audience.
In an attempt to fill this gap in your general knowledge, let me point you to a recent article by Mark Deuze.
Mark Deuze (2010). Survival of the mediated Journal of Cultural Science, 3 (2)
One interesting part of the essay deals with protestors around the world appropriating the aesthetic codes and themes of James Cameron’s film Avatar. In the Palestinian village of Bil’in, for instance, activists disguised as blue-skinned Na’vi fight « Israeli imperialism ». The same goes with other community initiatives around the world, such as the Dongria Kondh tribe in eastern India and the Kayapo Indians in the Amazon rainforest.
Colloque Performance, théâtre, anthropologie (INHA/EHESS, 24-25 mai 2011)
J’interviendrai lors de ces deux journées d’études organisées par Georges Vigarello, Sylvie Roques et Christian Biet. Voilà pour l’instant l’argumentaire et le programme – cela s’annonce tout à fait passionnant.
PERFORMANCE, théâtre, anthropologie
Le mot de performance s’est imposé dans le monde de l’art. Les chorégraphies de Jérôme Bel en danse, le « bio-art » de Yann Marussich jusqu’aux transformations physiques d’Orlan en sont autant d’exemples Il est porté sans doute par un contexte : celui de la productivité, de l’innovation, voire de l’informatisation1. Il s’est imposé aussi au théâtre, d’autant plus facilement d’ailleurs que la place du « faire » y semble première. Il s’y est même banalisé, régulièrement évoqué, jusqu’à apparaître quelquefois comme étant à l’essence même du jeu2. L’intérêt indéniable est ici d’aiguiser l’attention vers la part physique du spectacle, son versant le plus charnel.
- Voir Innovation et performance, approches interdisciplinaires, dir. D. Foray et J. Mannesse, Paris, EHESS, 1999. ↩
- F. Dupont, « Facere ludos. La fonction rituelle et l’écriture du texte dans la comédie romaine: un exemple, le pseudolus de Plaute », Colloque international, Genève, 27-29 novembre 2003. ↩
Bums, bridges, and primates: Some elements for a sociology of online interactions
This text was presented at the conference “Web Culture: New Modes of Knowledge, New Sociabilities”, Villa Gillet, Lyon (France), February 10th, 2011. Check against delivery. Click here for the .pdf version. Click here for the French translation.
In today’s presentation I will focus on the kind of social structures that users of computer-mediated global online communication networks (notably, the Web and social media) contribute to put in place. The point I will try to make is that science understanding of Web-based sociabilities has progressed enormously in the last decade, and that this should inform public policies touching on the Web, its regulation and governance.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE COMPUTER BUMS GONE?
Early glimpses into the social implications of ICT at a micro-level (that is: for the users themselves) date back to the mid-1970s and focus on the negative effect of these technologies. At the very origins of computer culture, we witness the emergence of the stereotype of the socially awkward computer hacker, isolated by the calculating machine which alienates him and keeps him apart from his peers. This characterization dates back to a time before the Web. In his Computer Power and Human Reason : From Judgement to Calculation (1976) Joseph Weizenbaum delivers us the portrayal of this subculture of compulsive computer programmer – or, as he liked to dub them, “computer bums”.
These are “possessed students” who “work until they nearly drop, twenty, thirty hours at a time. Their food, if they arrange it, is brought to them: coffee, Cokes, sandwiches. If possible, they sleep on cots near the computer. […] Their rumpled clothes, their unwashed and unshaven faces, and their uncombed hair all testify that they are oblivious to their bodies and to the world in which they move. They exist, at least when so engaged, only through and for the computers.”
Since this first occurrence, and for a long time, common sense has almost unmistakably associated computer use and social isolation. Cultural analysts, novelists, commentators have been developing on this trope. Iconic cyberpunk author William Gibson, famously described Case, the main character of Neuromancer (1984), as a cyberspace-addict incapable of functioning in an offline social situation.
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What’s this blog about?
I'm an associate professor of Digital Humanities at the Paris Institute of Technology (ParisTech) and a researcher in sociology at the Edgar-Morin Center (EHESS, Paris). Bodyspacesociety offers regular updates about my ongoing research, publications, and teaching. If you want updates on media features and conferences, please click here.
The views presented on this blog are solely mine and do not represent the positions of my institutions of affiliation.
New books out now!
The special issue of the journal 'Communications' Cultures du numérique is out. Also, you might want to check my latest book Les liaisons numériques. Vers une nouvelle sociabilité?. Both published by Editions du Seuil, both available in bookshops and online.
» Buy Liaisons numériques
» Visit the companion website
» Buy Cultures du numérique (Communications, n. 88)
All blog content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 France License.
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