Author Archives: jwyg

New piece: “Is “another internet possible”? Inside Labour’s digital infrastructure plans” in Open Democracy

By jwyg | Published: December 6, 2019

The following piece is cross-posted from OpenDemocracy, where it was published on 4th December 2019. The Labour Party’s recently launched manifesto and associated proposals contain the seeds of an egalitarian, progressive vision of the role that digital, data and knowledge infrastructures might play in contemporary life. While their proposals on broadband, tax, data, patents, platforms, AI and digital rights […]

Posted in academia, actor-network theory, data, data activism, digital, media studies, policy | Tagged AI, artificial intelligence, British Broadband, data colonialism, data4gnd, digital rights, Green New Deal, information infrastructure, infrastructure studies, Labour Party, national data funds, OpenDemocracy, platform capitalism, surveillance captialism, Tax | Comments closed

Book chapter: “What a difference a dataset makes? Data journalism and/as data activism”, Data in Society, (Policy Press, 2019)

By jwyg | Published: November 7, 2019

A book chapter on “What a difference a dataset makes? Data journalism and/as data activism” co-authored with Liliana Bounegru has just been published in a new book Data in Society: Challenging Statistics in an Age of Globalisation on Policy Press. The preprint is available here and an excerpt from the introduction and full reference are copied below.

Posted in academia, data, data activism, datajournalism, media studies, publications, research, science and technology studies | Tagged book chapters, Data Activism, data journalism, radical statistics, sts | Comments closed

New Chinese Translation of Public Data Lab’s “A Field Guide to ‘Fake News’ and Other Information Disorders”

By jwyg | Published: April 26, 2019

I’ve just received a copy of a new Chinese translation of the Public Data Lab‘s “A Field Guide to ‘Fake News’ and Other Information Disorders” which has been published by the Quality News Development Association (優質新聞發展協會) in Taipei. I’ve been told that a free digital copy is forthcoming, and in the mean time printed copies […]

Posted in A Field Guide to "Fake News" and Other Information Disorders, academia, books, datajournalism, digital journalism, digital methods, open access, Public Data Lab, publications, research, science and technology studies, translations | Tagged Chinese, misinformation, New Media Studies, platform studies, Public Data Lab, translations | Comments closed

Book Chapter: “Computational Imaginaries: Some Further Remarks on Leibniz, Llull and Rethinking the History of Calculating Machines”, DIA-LOGOS: Ramon Llull’s Method of Thought and Artistic Practice (University of Minnesota Press, 2018)

By jwyg | Published: April 25, 2019

I’ve just had a chapter published in a new book on DIA-LOGOS: Ramon Llull’s Method of Thought and Artistic Practice (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018). The book is edited by the philosopher Amador Vega; the artist, curator and theorist Peter Weibel (who also co-curated the Making Things Public exhibition with Bruno Latour); and media theorist Siegfried […]

Posted in academia, art, culture, history, humanities, leibniz, media studies, philosophers, philosophy, publications, research, science and technology studies, sociology, technology | Tagged Amador Vega, Calculating Machines, Computational Imaginaries, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Leibniz, Peter Weibel, Ramon Llull, Siegfried Zielinski, Zairja, ZKM | Comments closed

New Course on “Data Activism” at King’s College London

By jwyg | Published: March 5, 2019

This academic year we’ve got a new graduate course on “data activism” at King’s College London, which I’ve been teaching this semester. The course supports students to critically engage with emerging practices associated with data activism, drawing on perspectives from science and technology studies, (new) media studies and data studies. Along with other readings, it […]

Posted in academia, actor-network theory, advocacy, data, data activism, datactive, design, digital, digital methods, digitalhumanities, higher education, research, science and technology studies, teaching, visualisation | Tagged Amnesty Decoders, Amnesty International, citizen generated data, Critical Data Studies, Data Activism, data imaginaries, data infrastructures, data justice, data revolution, data worlds, DATACTIVE, Datafication, Density Design, design studies, engaged research, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, imaginaries, MA, OpenStreetMap, participatory data infrastructures, participatory design, quantification, science and technology studies, sociology of quantification, Sorting Things Out, Surveillance | Comments closed

New paper: “Data witnessing: attending to injustice with data in Amnesty International’s Decoders project” in Information, Communication & Society

By jwyg | Published: February 20, 2019

Information, Communication & Society have just published an article that I wrote on “Data witnessing: attending to injustice with data in Amnesty International’s Decoders project”. The article is open access and the abstract and full reference are copied below. This piece would not have been possible without the time and input from the list of […]

Posted in academia, data, data activism, publications, research, science and technology studies, visualisation | Tagged Amnesty Decoders, Amnesty International, Critical Data Studies, Data, Data Activism, data and society, data infrastructures, data practices, data publics, data studies, Data Visualisation, Data Witnessing, data work, data worlds, Decoders, digital witnessing, Media Studies, media witnessing, New Media Studies, science and technology studies | Comments closed

Abstract for “Fog of Finance? Visualising Offshore and the Aesthetics of Uncertainty” at MoneyLab #6, University of Siegen

By jwyg | Published: February 8, 2019

Following is the abstract for our contribution on “The Fog of Finance? Visualising Offshore and the Aesthetics of Uncertainty” at the upcoming MoneyLab #6: Infrastructures of Money hosted by the Institute of Network Cultures and the University of Siegen. This is based on a collaboration between the Tax Justice Network, the University of Sussex, Density Design and the […]

Posted in academia, advocacy, art, data, datajournalism, design, digital, digital journalism, digitalhumanities, Public Data Lab, research, science and technology studies, talks, taxjustice | Tagged critical data practice, Density Design, Money Lab, MoneyLab, MoneyLab6, Offshore Finance, Public Data Lab, Tax Justice Network, University of Siegen | Comments closed

Talk: “What Does Data Do? Making Data Public, Keeping Data Private and Other Data Worlds”, Privacy Camp 2019, Brussels

By jwyg | Published: January 29, 2019

Notes from my contribution to a panel on “Reimagining Data Futures: Data and Agency” at Privacy Camp 2019 with Minna Ruckenstein (Consumer Society Research Centre, University of Helsinki), Mirko Tobias Schäfer (Utrecht Data School, University of Utrecht) and Stefania Milan (DATACTIVE, University of Amsterdam), moderated by Imge Ozcan (Law, Science, Technology & Society, Vrije Universiteit […]

Posted in academia, conferences, Data Worlds, events, privacy, research, talks | Tagged Amnesty International, Anne Helmond, Bruno Latour, Data Activism, data infrastructures, Data Society, Donna Haraway, Imge Ozcan, infrastructure studies, Mirko Schafer, platform studies, Privacy, PrivacyCamp, Sandra Braman, Stefania Milan, sts, Utrecht Data School | Comments closed

New Book Chapter: “Making Data Public? The Open Data Index as Participatory Device” in Good Data (Amsterdam, Institute of Network Cultures: 2019)

By jwyg | Published: January 26, 2019

A book chapter on “Making Data Public? The Open Data Index as Participatory Device” co-authored with Danny Lämmerhirt has just been published in a new open access book on Good Data. The book is part of the Theory on Demand series of the Institute of Network Cultures in Amsterdam, founded by media theorist and activist […]

Posted in academia, advocacy, data, Data Worlds, datajournalism, digital, media studies, open access, policy, publications, research, science and technology studies | Tagged Critical Data Studies, Data Activism, data infrastructures, data journalism, enumerated entities, enumeration, Indigenous Data Sovereignty, material participation, Media Studies, open data, Open Data Index, Open Knowledge International, participation, performativity, science and technology studies, sociology of quantification, statactivism, sts, valuation | Comments closed

Table of contents and chapter previews for “The Data Journalism Handbook: Towards a Critical Data Practice”

By jwyg | Published: December 12, 2018

As we announced last year, Liliana Bounegru and I are currently co-editing a new edition of the The Data Journalism Handbook which will be published on Amsterdam University Press next year. As it says in the introduction, the book is “a collective experiment in accounting for data journalism practices and a collective invitation to explore […]

Posted in academia, books, data, datajournalism, datajournalismhandbook, digital journalism, digital methods, media studies, open data, projects, Public Data Lab, publications, research, science and technology studies, visualisation | Tagged algorithm studies, algorithmic accountability, archiving, critical data practice, critical technical practice, data infrastructures, data investigations, data journalism, Data Journalism Handbook, data methods, data practices, data publics, data visualisations, ddj, digital liberalism, Digital Methods, Indigenous Data Sovereignty, news graphics, open source, Panama Papers, platform studies, teaching, text analysis | Comments closed

Dr. Jonathan Gray is Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London; Co-Founder of the Public Data Lab; and Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative at the University of Amsterdam and the médialab at Sciences Po, Paris. More about his work can be found here. He is on Twitter at @jwyg.